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" 

NINETEEN 



BEAUTIFUL YEARS; 



OR, 



SKETCHES OF A GIRL'S LIFE, 



WRITTEN BY HER SISTE 




AN INTRODUCTION 



REV. R. S. FOSTER, D.D. 



My darlingl When thou wast alive with the rest, 
I held thee the sweetest, and loved thee the best : 
And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part 
As thy smiles used to do for thyself, gentle Heart? 

Mrs. Browning. 



NEW YORK: \£/ 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 



V 



J 2~4< / / £/ 



1864. 




/3~/ Pfr4^ 






V 



ft' 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight 
hundred and sixty-four, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of 
New York. 



-X & a *- 4 



TO 

MARY'S FATHER AND MOTHER, 

THIS STORY OF HER LIFE 
%x HBeTrfcatrtr, 

BY 

HER ONLY SISTER, 

AND 

THEIR LOVING CHILD. 



New York, March 2, 1864. 
Rev. Dr. Foster: 

Dear Sir, — Will you do us the favor to prepare a fitting 
Introduction to " Nineteen Beautiful Years?" Your ac- 
quaintance with and personal friendship for both author and 
subject will make it, we have no doubt, a pleasing task ; and 
by complying you will confer upon us and the public an ob- 
ligation. 

Eespectfully and truly, 

Harper and Brothers. 



Sing Sing, March 5, 1864. 
Messrs. Harper and Brothers : 

Dear Sirs, — I take great delight in complying with your 

request : believing, as I do, that the little volume which you 

are about to publish will be a most interesting and valuable 

contribution to the reading public. It will also be a task 

of love both for the living and the dead. 

Truly yours, etc., 

R. S. Foster. 



tfn ttje %nkx. 



TF the gentle reader whose eye may chance to 
linger on this line should be aboutto peruse 
the following pages, we do not ask her to stop 
a single moment here; she may, without dis- 
courtesy, turn at once to page nineteen, and pro- 
ceed. But is she hesitating ? We must then beg 
for a moment's parley — just long enough to say, 
Do no such thing. But I am busy — I have calls 
— I can not read every thing : — I have the last 
Atlantic, Harpers, Thackeray's best — I am not 
in the mood. Agreed : we comprehend you per- 
fectly. Still, be persuaded. An hour will suffice, 
and you will be the richer forever. We have 
some things more to say, but you are impatient. 
Drop us — turn to Chapter One ; the friends you 
want to know are there waiting for you. We 
are prosy; you will find them genial and enter- 
taining, and they have words to speak to you that 
will dwell in your heart, a joy through many a 
A 



ii To the Reader, 

dark day. Would you know more of them be- 
fore you form the acquaintance? — Read on, 
then. 

Nestling amidst the profuse foliage and deep 
shadows of an old oak-forest on the sunset shore 
of Lake Michigan is one of the loveliest villages 
any where to be found away from the hills of 
New England. The spot was selected as the 
sheltered, restful location of a cluster of Literary 
Institutions. Nature had indicated it as classic 
ground. The public buildings and tasteful homes 
have grown up amidst grand old trees, almost 
without marring them of a single limb. There 
is no hum of business — not even the occasional 
sound of a hammer ; no flaunting of signs ; no 
loaded trucks or drays — scarcely a remembrancer 
of the Mammonizing world. A Sabbath quiet 
rests upon the scene, interrupted only by the re- 
mittent swell of music from homes embowered 
amidst this aboriginal forest. Along the unpaved 
side- walks and off by the shore are companies of 
youth hastening to the summons of recitation- 
bell, or leisurely returning home after the duties 
of the hour. 

It was the privilege of the writer of this brief 
Introduction to spend three delightful years in 



To the Reader. iii 

this favored spot. Mid-way between his home 
and the lake-shore, and lending charm to a favor- 
ite ramble, rooted amidst thick -set hedges of 
young evergreens and many-tinted flowers, rose 
an unostentatious but inviting home. The per- 
fect taste without prophesied the grace and re- 
finement within. It was a staid, safe, restful- 
looking place. 

Five were the inmates — the father and mother, 
one son, and two daughters. The fact that the 
parents had settled here for no other object than 
the education of their children, sufficiently ex- 
plains their fibre — the stuff and make of them. 

The son was already a graduate, with honors, 
of one of the first colleges of the country, and now 
pursuing a course of theological study ; the two 
daughters, just blooming into womanhood, occu- 
pied a front rank in the classes of the excellent 
institution of which they were pupils. 

Daily, as I sat in my study, I saw them pass 
and repass with books in hand — books of meta- 
physics, literature, and science ; both delicate of 
build, the younger tall and slight. The pallor 
of much thought and earnest effort had fixed 
its unmistakable impress upon them. Even in 
youth the inward fire of love of learning was 



iv To the Reader. 

consuming them. Thus I saw them for the 
years, toiling lovingly together up the rugged 
steeps to the summit where Knowledge holds 
his seat. Sabbath morning found them regu- 
larly in the Lecture-hall, most attentive, most 
thoughtful among the listeners. Above their 
years they were appreciative. When the dis- 
cussions were profound their faces glowed with 
the sympathetic inspirations of genius. When 
the utterances were tender or beautiful, their 
hearts trembled with emotion and their eyes glis- 
tened with tears. 

" Death loves a shining mark." He passes by 
the hovel of the poor, the couch of the decrep- 
it, and the weary path of the dusty and way- 
worn pilgrim, that he may flesh his arrow in the 
bloom of youth and beauty. Sad it is to see the 
young and hopeful and helpful die ; the maiden 
turn aside from her companions, to seek the cov- 
ert of a silent chamber, that she may shut out 
of her sight the world to which she must soon 
bid a long adieu ! Who can explain the mys- 1 
tery that the brave, the gifted, the beautiful, the 
good, should die ? — that hearts attuned to love, 
and sensibilities transportingly awake to the joy 
of life, should be frozen and neutralized for the 



To the Reader. v 

grave ? If the world must have a sepulchre, why 
should it not be as the final resting-place of weary, 
worn-out age, or the gloomy prison of hideous- 
ness and crime ? 

Infinite love solves the otherwise inscrutable 
problem. There is an immortality beyond. The 
young and beautiful die but to live again ; close 
their eyes upon earth that they may open them 
in heaven ; relinquish the perishing loves of the 
earth-born that they may enter upon the rap- 
turous friendships of the unperishing and eter- 
nal. 

Beautiful as the earth is, it is not the home for 
immortals. Beyond the azure depths, where Arc- 
turus leads his sons and Orion bathes in his sea 
of tinted light, the All-Father has spread the 
flowery fields and planted the fragrant groves 
amidst whose innocence and love they shall as- 
cend the eternities. 

Gentle and sheltered as was the path along 
which Mary traveled, her feet soon became weary. 
One day — it was one of the long, sunny days of 
her nineteenth summer — she came in, and, laying 
her head-on her mother's bosom, said, "I am so 
tired !" It was her dying pillow. Loving, ten- 
der hands took up the faded form she had be- 



vi v To the Header. 

queathed to earth, and laid it softly down under 
the sods - of "Rose Hill," to sleep until the an- 
gel's trumpet shall waken it to life. 

"Nineteen Beautiful Years" is the sisterly- 
tribute which Frank, in tears and loneliness, 
brings to lay on Mary's grave— a tribute as full 
of fragrance and touching beauty as the life whose 
memory it seeks to perpetuate was full of sweet- 
ness and innocence. It is more than a tribute ; 
it is the fulfillment of a solemn commission 
breathed from the lips of the dying — a commis- 
sion that might have adorned the lips of Jesus in 
the hour of his agony : " Tell every body to be 
good." In this way the one whom she most loved 
^ — if a sister's can exceed a mother's love — the 
one to whom she was most dear, seeks to dis- 
charge the dying trust. How faithfully, how 
transcendently she has performed this duty, you 
have only to read to ascertain. 

It is with no ordinary pleasure that I accept 
the invitation of the publishers to introduce, in a 
few pages, this most interesting little volume. 
The compliance is enforced no more by love than 
by the conviction I have that, so far #s I may 
contribute to the wider reading of the following 
pages, I shall be conferring a real benefit on the 



To the Header. vii 

minds influenced, and, through them, upon soci- 
ety at large. 

The book is the joint production of two 
minds, consisting mainly of excerpta from the 
private journal of the gifted girl, who was un- 
consciously penning her own biography; cull- 
ed and collated with great good taste by her 
sister, with added reflections and reminiscences 
of her own. There is every where a freshness 
and sparkle which rarely adorn the pages of the 
best writers. While the story is exquisite and 
racy throughout, undoubtedly the extracts from 
the private journal lend the chief charm to the 
volume. These are the more entertaining and 
surprising that they are but stray jottings intend- 
ed for no eye but that of the writer. We are led 
into the inner chambers of a many-sided soul by 
an unconscious guide, and its wealthiest treasures 
are undesignedly spread out for our gaze. We 
are all the time startled at finding a child re- 
citing to us the profoundest philosophy — trans- 
muting the commonest things into sermons of 
the deepest wisdom — eliciting a poem from the 
pebble, the snow-flake, the falling acorn. Now 
we are amused with a quaint imagination, which 
must have made the writer smile when it dropped 



viii To the Header. 

from her curious, versatile pen; next we are 
shaken with such pathos as can only have birth 
in a soul stirred with the profoundest passion. 
We know of no such collection of gems from a 
single source in the same space. As a whole 
it is the secret history, naively recited to it- 
self, of a wonderful soul, struggling up through 
the weaknesses and bewilderments that encom- 
pass this earthly life, to the pure, calm, and un- 
clouded brightness of eternal day. We are let 
in to its doubts and fears, its questionings and 
disquietudes, its longings and hopes, until it 
emerges into the repose of faith and the bliss of 
pardon— the sunlight of infinite love. In a word, 
it is the most entrancing of all histories — the histo- 
ry of an inner life — the genesis and growth of a 
redeemed soul. To the cultivated and appreciative 
reader of every age, sex, and sect, there is spread 
out here a rare and rich feast, from the enjoy- 
ment of which he must arise a purer, stronger, 
and better nature. 

The limits allowed to this Introduction will not 
permit of more particular analysis or of extended 
reference. We can not, however, forbear a few 
quotations. The following view of Mary's char- 
acter is eminently sustained throughout her Jour- 



To the Reader. ix 

nal: "To her every thing was religious. Her 
great strength, notwithstanding many endow- 
ments, was in her earnest purpose to have the 
mind of Christ; to perceive God in all the scenes, 
and to acknowledge Him in all the actions of her 
life. Hers was not a feverish, morbid piety ; it 
was vigorous and normal. It was not prisoned 
in her closet, nor between the lids of her Bible ; 
the fragrance of a Christ-like life was not alone 
upon her Sabbath-day attire, but its sweetness 
purified each word and action of her common 
history." 

The first extract given is the note she makes 
of her seventeenth birthday : it is characteristic. 

"March 5, 1860. — This beautiful morning 
dawns upon my seventeenth birthday. Truly is 
it said that this is the sunniest part of life, when 
the future lies like a pleasant land before us; 
when the present has no clouds, and the past 
seems good and fair. O kind and loving God ! 
on this happy, natal morning I give Thee unfeign- 
ed thanks for life and the blessings it has brought 
to me. From infancy, through childhood, up to 
youth Thy hand has brought me. Still keep and 
still preserve me, Father up in heaven, and grant 
that when unworthy I am taken from this pleas- 



x To the Header. 

ant, pleasant world, I may— -through Thy great 
love — go to live in one still more beautiful, for the 
sake of Christ, our Saviour." 

Though religious from childhood, Mary's life 
was a struggle after a conscious divine life ; her 
soul was all the way reaching out its hands after 
God — struggling toward an ideal. Our sympa- 
thies and joys alternately intermingle with her 
progress. " God has placed me in the midst of 
friends whom I love very dearly. I am almost 
happy; and if I were a Christian I should be 
very happy indeed. I wish I were a Christian ; 
and yet it is foolish to wish. Why do I not 
say that I love God because He is so good to 
me, and that I will try, in Christ's strength, to do 
those things that He requires ? This is all the 
demand that the Bible makes of me. I should 
feel very much ashamed if I did not say as much 
as this in speaking of an earthly friend to whom 
I owed every thing that his love and his power 
could give me. Why can I not act as reasonably 
toward God, instead of saying, 'I wish that I 
could say and show by my life that I am grate- 
ful ?' Revelation and my intellect show me the 
relations in which I stand to the Ruler of the 
Universe as plainly as I see those in which I stand 



To the Header. xi 

toward the Governor of the State in which I live. 
In both cases I am the inferior ; but the degree 
of my inferiority differs infinitely. How it is that 
I can not readily take hold of things spiritual, He 
whom I would worship knows much better than 
I, and to Him I will earnestly pray for light and 
peace." 

Once more, to show the struggle of her mind : 
" Thursday evening. — In my room. I am hav- 
ing a private prayer-meeting, and am almost re- 
solved to have one every Thursday evening while 
good people are at the church holding theirs, 
unless I should decide to go there myself. I 
have looked out through the window into the 
clear sky, and up to the beautiful moon, and won- 
dered where God is. I have imagined a great 
somebody, in a great somewhere, who is full of 
strength and kindness, and I've prayed that I 
might believe, then trust, then love." 

"Last evening I went to class-meeting and 
told the kind Christian people that I wanted to 
be good. I was very much frightened before I 
began to speak. My heart beat until I seemed 
to feel it leaping against my side, but strength 
was given me to declare in public my determina- 
tion to seek for a true life henceforth. To do 



xii To the Reader. 

this I thought reasonable and my duty. I have 
been educated to believe that one must come out 
boldly c on the Lord's side' in this world, where 
those who are on Satan's side make no secret of 
that fact. So, to me it was a necessity to make 
this public announcement of my purposes. When 
I had done so my heart, that had fluttered so 
painfully, became suddenly quiet. The hurricane 
that had swept over me was past, and I felt so 
queer, so still." 

But we are admonished that our limit is reach- 
ed, and that all the quaint and beautiful thoughts 
will be found by the reader without our help. 

Mary, throughout life and quite to the last, 
had a strange, shrinking fear of death. She never 
attended a funeral, even when her dearest friend 
was laid away in the last resting-place, and would 
not look upon the face of the dead. She loved 
life and all things beautiful, and the world to her 
was so pleasant that she wished to linger here. 
But inscrutable councils ordered an early trans- 
lation for her. 

Her death-scene was brief, unexpected, and 
thrilling. She had said, a few days before, in a 
conversation with her sister, "Do you know? 
Frank ! it has come to me lately, that if I died I 



To the Reader. xiii 

should go right to heaven!" In the morning 
her symptoms were so favorable that she talked 
of the morrow with the confidence of one in per- 
fect health ; little dreaming that when it dawned 
she would enter the golden portals of Heaven. 
Becoming suddenly worse she realized her situa- 
tion. In a few moments she exclaimed, " Oh, He 
has come ! He has come ! He holds me by the 
hand ! He is all mine — oh no, not all ! He is 
every body's, and yet mine !" 

Lying with her eyes closed she soliloquized 
thus : " Christ talks to me. He says : ' She tried 
to ,be good, but she wandered. But I will for- 
give her and save her.' " " Tell every body to be 
good !" " I'm getting more faith !" Her time 
was up ; and turning as if to some visible pres- 
ence, she said, "Now— take me quick — dear 
God ! — take me — on this side !" " She closed 
her eyes wearily. Her breast heaved once — 
twice — and she was gone." A fitting close to 
Nineteen Beautiful Years. 



€nnttnis. 



PAGE 

TO THE READER i 

L-AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 17 

H.— THE CHILD 27 

III— THE SCHOOL-GIRL 45 

IV— THE YOUNG LADY 81 

V.— THE INVALID ! 195 

VI.— ENTRANCE UPON UNCONDITIONED LIFE 217 

THRENODY. By Joel Benton 227 

VH.— CONCLUDING PARAGRAPHS 229 

VHX— WHERE? A POEM. By Luella Clabk 237 



I. 

in 3trttatortartj Cjwpto. 



B 



11 ^pELL every body to be good !" These 
-■- simple, earnest words — among the last 
ever spoken by the gentle girl whose story we 
have written — form at once the index to its 
purpose and our apology for its presentation. 

The delineation of a character, and the por- 
trayal of a life like hers — although the one 
was in its earliest blossoming, and the other 
had measured less than a score of years — will 
give her message to the world in a manner 
more fitting and significant than it could be 
expressed in sermon or in song. 

And yet, when we contemplated preparing 
this biography, our surface-thought was that it 
did not seem probable that we could interest 
those who had never seen the pleasant face of 
her who is our heroine ; who had never smiled 
at her quaint words, nor felt a pang of sorrow 
for her in their lives. 



20 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

But reflection proves our error. One of our 
Great-hearts of the pen has said what every 
reader's highest nature must tell him is the 
truth : 

" There is an imperishable nature of man, 
ever and every where the same, of which each 
particular man is a testimony and representa- 
tion. At* a certain depth all bosoms commun- 
icate, all hearts are one." 

So your grief, O Humanity ! is mine, and 
mine is yours, by an irrevocable and blessed 
law. Thus, in some sense, our interests are the 
same. If, then, we are of one family, with one 
universal heart, why may we not talk in love 
and sympathy even across the seas? for your 
eye glistens on that side, and mine on this, with 
the same emotion ; since, as a generous soul has 
said, "I am human, and whatever touches hu- 
manity touches me." 

Kind friends ! you would read of and discuss 
a fictitious character with relish, and surely you 
will be as much interested in this one, which is 
real, which is still in conscious life, and though 
unknown to you here, will greet you in the 
glorious, mystical land — perchance ere very 
long. 



Ail Introductory Chapter. 21 

You are not bidden to the contemplation of 
an ascetic's character, nor to one of an abnor- 
mal growth and a too early ripeness. A pure- 
hearted, kindly girl is introduced to you — one 
whose character, though not rounded into sym- 
metry, gave promise of a noble womanhood ; 
one who loved life as well as you do, who 
studied diligently to prepare herself for the 
beautiful years which she believed were stretch- 
ing out before her ; who felt it was 

u A thing to be beloved, 
And honored holily, and bravely borne ;" 

yet who, notwithstanding her deep sense of its 
duties, and her earnest wish to merit its re- 
wards, was known among her young friends as 
the merriest of them all. 

The writer has thought — and this opinion has 
been confirmed by consultations with those well 
qualified to judge — that this portraiture of a 
character so sweet and so pleasant would not 
fail to be of interest to the young, for whom 
it is more especially intended, and could hardly 
fail to make them better. 

This life of Mary has been written lovingly, 
for the hand which has traced its lines is the 
same that all through childhood held her chub- 



22 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

by little hand as two sisters took their wood- 
land rambles, or went along the shady path to 
school. And the story is of how she lived 
among us with love and cheeriness ; how she 
was eager to grow wise ; how she tried to be 
of use, and to make it a happy thing for others 
that she lived ; how she grew very spiritual, 
very "meet for angels 7 company;" how Christ 
came for her one beautiful June morning, and 
she went away with Him. 

If some rare plant should grow within your 
garden, with fragile stem, delicate leaf, and 
pure white blossom; if it should elaborate 
from the material common to all the garden — 
from the moisture, air, and sunshine that pure 
corolla, those fairy stamens, that faint, delicious 
fragrance, would you not wish that others might 
see your treasure and inhale the perfume which 
it bore? 

This gentle girl was such a flower, blooming 
in the garden of life. From elements beyond 
the reach of none she elaborated a character 
genial and beautiful. Its roots were firmly 
planted in the truth ; the air it breathed was 
love toward God and toward all that He has 
made. The dews of gentleness and charity fell 



An Introductory Chapter. 23 

upon it and were absorbed ; it expanded in the 
sunshine of faith, and the perfume of humility 
filled all the air around it. 

It can but cheer and strengthen those who, 
like her, are young — who would gather within 
their hearts all sweet and kindly qualities — 
to contemplate one who, though not faultless, 
wrought vigorously during the brief years al- 
lotted to her, believing that 

" Sculptors of life are we, 
With our souls uncarved before us;" 

and who, in that strength which was never yet 
denied to the earnest supplicant, overcame all, 
" even the last enemy, which is Death." 

Her outside life was not eventful, but her 
intellect and heart-history can not fail to prove 
rich and beautiful, if pictured even dimly. 
And we all know well enough that away down 
in the heart, where it is still, is the place in 
which all true living is done. As one think- 
eth in his heart, so is he ; and what my sister 
thought in hers I know quite well, for we kept 
nothing from each other — a broad statement, 
indeed, yet one which is strictly true. 

Books of the same general scope as this are 
frequently consigned by the consolatory critic, 



24 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

without farther comment, to "the circle of rel- 
atives for whom they were no doubt intended, 
and who will find a mournful pleasure in their 
perusal." Lest some such mistake should be 
made in the present instance, the statement 
may be permitted that this book, however sig- 
nally it may fail of fulfilling its design, is not 
intended merely as a receptacle in which the 
memory of a departed friend may be preserved 
— however sweet and hallowed that memory 
— for the gratification of relatives. Its use is 
meant to be a wider one, and its author is not 
without hope that many a bright-eyed youth 
and maiden may rise from its perusal with 
braver hearts to do that which is right — with 
firmer faith in the unseen powers that work 
for those who seek the truth, and a confirmed 
resolve to be more gentle and helpful — more 
diligent to win from life its truest joys. 

Mourners throng our streets; the sable gar- 
ments of the bereaved are seen on every hand ; 
the union and liberties of our native land are 
being won by untold heartaches. If to some 
who sorrow for 

"The unreturning brave" 
this little book might bring new suggestions 



An Introductory Chapter. 25 

of the Helper who was never so near to them 
as now ; or if to any of the noble band who 
fight our battles it might come as a loving 
voice from loftier regions, urging them on to 
victory in the war against a foe more wily than 
any ever vanquished by carnal weapons, a dou- 
ble purpose would be served. 

Now is Mary's story left to the criticisms 
of strangers. She was always sheltered from 
the keen edge of rebuke ; she never knew the 
lack of sympathy. Dear friends who read about 
her, may she find loving hearts in yours ! 



II 

6jit Cjttlb. 



"Here at the portal thou dost stand, 
And with thy little hand 
Thou openest the mysterious gate 
Into the future's undiscovered land." 

Longfellow. 

"Tis strange how childhood's simple words 
Interpret Nature's mystic book — 
How it will listen to the birds, 
Or ponder on the running brook, 
As if its spirit fed. 

Willis. 



WHEN the character and life of a private 
individual are portrayed, the question 
with the reader is not, Who was he? but that 
other and more important one, What was he ? 
To what influences was he subjected? 

So, in this simple narrative, we shall have 
little to do with names and dates, but shall con- 
cern ourselves with something more intrinsic, 
more vital than these. 

Omitting then, as unimportant, the time and 
place of Mary's birth, we introduce to you a 
chubby, fair-faced child in simple frock and 
snowy apron, with sun-bonnet dangling by one 
string from her hand, with a firm, steady step, 
and a voice full of falling inflections. The 
force of a strong will compresses her cherry 
lips ; the love of a warm heart sparkles in her 
eyes ; the prophecy of a fine intellect is on her 
broad, smooth brow. A sweet and pleasant 
child, you would say at the first glance. 



30 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

Country life has set carnations blooming in 
her cheeks, broadened her chest, and given to 
her that sense of freedom and expansion in 
which a noble nature has its healthiest growth. 
Was it likely that she, as a woman, should be 
dwarfed and intolerant, who, when a child, saw 
always the river flowing so broad and so free ; 
trees throwing out their branches thrifty and 
long, whither they would ; prairies stretching 
away mile after mile until the eye ached with 
following their track? Surely, if one is rear- 
ed in sight of any grand scene of nature, he 
should, in his hours of thanksgiving, make 
mention of the fact! "We can not in a few 
pages give a more truthful idea of this child's 
life than by inserting the following sketch writ- 
ten for a friend's amusement, some time ago : 

You ask for my memories of those young 
years. Were I a poet I might sing of them 
so that vistas in the woods, the murmur of 
streams, the odor of moss and violets, and the 
taste of nuts and berries should come to your 
imagination as you heard me. Nature! 
glorious mirror of Divinity ! What constant 
students were we of thy myriad forms and 
mysteries all through those years of childhood ! 



Hie Child. 31 

As I write, separated by hundreds of miles 
from the dear old home, past scenes rise be- 
fore me, sounds once familiar are in my ears. 
Away in the pasture the cow-bell's mellow 
tinkle is heard, bringing suggestions of cool 
and shady places, of odors moist and sweet. 
The drowsy, dreamy feeling comes again, the 
same which the music of the bells brought 
with it long ago. Again the wind is making 
that endless, breathing sound among the tree- 
tops ; again the liquid notes of the blackbirds 
join in chorus, in the poplar grove down by 
the river; again the complaint of the mourn- 
ing dove, sweetest and saddest of songs, comes 
from the lonely depths of the woods. And so 
the spell is upon me, and I will picture a few 
scenes from the Past. 

A queer old cottage with rambling roof, ga- 
bles, dormer-windows, and little porches, cran- 
nies, and out-of-the-way nooks, scattered here 
and there, was our home. The bluffs, so char- 
acteristic of Wisconsin, rose about it on the 
right and left. The beautiful Eock Eiver 
flowed at the west side ; to the east a prairie 
stretched away to meet the horizon, yellow 
with grain in summer, fleecy with snow in 



32 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

the winter of the year. Groves of oak and 
hickory are on either hand ; a miniature forest 
of evergreens almost conceals the cottage from 
the view of passers-by; a vine — the Virginia 
creeper — twines at will around the pillars of 
the piazza and over the parlor windows, while 
its rival, the Michigan rose, clambers over trel- 
lis and balustrade to the roof. The air is laden 
with the perfume of flowers. Through the 
thick and luxuriant growth of shrubbery paths 
stray off aimlessly, tempting the feet of the cu- 
rious down their mysterious aisles. Follow- 
ing one of these in the afternoon of a summer 
day, you will come to a fine old oak, on which 
you will be quite likely to notice-board with 
these words printed upon it, in large letters : 

THE EAGLE'S NEST.— BEWAKE ! , 

Looking away up among the branches you 
will see, perhaps, sitting on a rough seat fasten- ' 
ed among them, a blue-eyed, brown-haired little 
girl, engaged in drawing, or in making a fancy 
fan out of blue jays' and orioles' feathers, or 
perhaps in fashioning a fine white turnip into 
a drinking-cup. If you are not quite a stran- 
ger she will look at you in an ingenuous way, 



The Child. 33 

and reply to any questions you may ask with 
simplicity and freedom. The honesty of her 
face and the fearlessness of her manner may 
induce you to prolong the conversation. If 
you speak admiringly of the flowers which 
bloom in rich profusion on every side, she will 
instantly offer to gather some of them for you : 
and, descending with graceful agility from her 
lofty seat, she will cull the choicest blossoms, 
and arrange them with an ease and delicacy 
which can not fail to surprise you. The nicety 1 
of discrimination shown in the grouping-of col- 
ors — the quick, critical glance at the effect — 
the immediate discovery of a violation of the 
laws of taste — will strike you as unusual in a 
child of eight or nine years old. If you sug- 
gest a ramble through the garden, she will 
cordially take your offered hand, and lead you 
to her favorite places, making many quaint re- 
marks in explanation of the various points of 
interest. 

Once, when acting in this capacity of guide, 
she completed the round by bringing her 
friends to "her ant-mound," as she called it, in 
a remote part of the grounds. She was fond 
of sitting here to watch the labors of the in- 
C 



34 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

dustrious little insects, which she had taken 
under her especial care. 

" I wonder if we don't seem as small and as 
ignorant to God as those ants do to us I" she 
said, meditatively, as they all stood around the 
hill ; and added, not speaking to any one, but 
" thinking aloud:" 

" Oh no ! That can't be true ; for it is nat- 
ural that God should care for us, since we are 
in his image, and since his Son gave up his life 
to save us." 

Some one began to stir up the nest ; "wishing 
to see what the little creatures kept in it," he said 
to Mary, by way of an apology. She caught his 
hand, and, looking up imploringly, exclaimed : 

" Please don't ! Think how you would like 
to have your house torn down by some great 
ugly giant, and yourself turned out of doors!" 

The " Grave-yard of the Pets" was a favorite 
place of resort. Here many tiny hillocks, care- 
fully sodded, were scattered about, the glisten- 
ing white shingles at the head of each giving an 
intimation of what lay beneath. Among the 
inscriptions I can remember this : 

"Hush the light laugh and merry jest as you approach 
the grave of Yorick — well beloved !" 



The Child. 35 

No canary ever had a sweeter song than the 
yellow - breasted warbler which had this epi- 
taph. Another one read thus : 

" Beauty and Brighty, 
Our Pet Rabbits : 
We loved them, but they died." 

On another of these simple monuments to 
departed worth, surrounded by elaborate carv- 
ings, are the words : 

11 Mary's White Kitten.". 

Every pet that died at Forest Home was cer- 
tain to receive a decent burial, and to be sin- 
cerely mourned. Mary was very active upon 
these occasions ; and whether it was her work 
to line the little grave with leaves and flowers, 
or to sing, 

"Alas! poor pet, and did it die? 
How dismal this must be!" 

she performed it with great earnestness and 
gravity. 

Her love of the beautiful was early devel- 
oped, and was almost the ruling passion of her 
life. Sometimes — especially in later years — it 
may have been mistaken for a resemblance to 
personal vanity, though this could have been 
the case only among those who had but a slight 



36 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

acquaintance with her, or who possessed but a 
small power of discrimination. To one whose 
love of beauty is so intense a tasteful toilet is 
an essential ; and this not with the thought, " I 
will adorn myself — I will seek to compel ad- 
miration ;" but with this thought, or rather with 
this instinct — purer and more worthy — " It is 
fitting, it is beautiful, to be appropriately and 
tastefully dressed ; to present, so far as is con- 
sistent, a fine personal appearance. For this 
reason I will try to do so." Once, in her jour- 
nal, I remember, she speaks of wishing that she 
could have a velvet dress of a color that she 
admired. To those familiar with her character 
this was simply an aspiration toward the beau- 
tiful for its own, not for her sake. 

These aesthetic tendencies so early manifest- 
ed led to the organization of an Artist's Club, 
consisting of Mary and myself, when she was 
about ten years old, which was a source of 
much pleasure and profit to us both. From 
conversations to which we had listened, and 
from books that we had read, we obtained the 
idea, and we worked it out in this wise. At 
a meeting held in our little room one summer 
evening, which was characterized by a deco- 



The Child. 37 

rum and energy seldom surpassed even in 
graver deliberations, we drafted a set of Eeso- 
lutions which, as subsequently copied into a 
book obtained for that purpose, lie before me 
now. They set forth our conviction that con- 
cert of effort is conducive to success in any 
undertaking, and that this being true we, "the 
parties of the first and second part," did here- 
by "promise to pay" particular attention to 
the Fine Arts, and would organize a society 
for that purpose. The Kesolutions proceed 
with many a " whereas," " therefore," etc., to 
state more definitely the plan for executing 
our design, and form an amusing medley of 
all the legal phrases we could recollect having 
known gentlemen to employ in business docu- 
ments or conversations. It seems rather strange 
that two who were almost constantly associa- 
ted, and who for many years had no society be- 
sides each other's, should thus formally unite 
in a new enterprise. But this was the invari- 
able mode of procedure. We found variety 
and amusement in these business - meetings, 
and omitted no formality during their prog- 
ress which could add to the dignity which we 
attached to ourselves in our official capacity. 



38 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

The "associated effort" inaugurated upon the 
occasion referred to was vigorously made. 
Only one office appertained to the " Artist's 
Club," and this was that of " Provider," whose 
business it was to make all needful prepara- 
tions for our semi-weekly excursions for the 
purpose of taking sketches "from nature;" to 
oversee and aid in the arrangement of "the 
Studio," which we regarded as a necessary ap- 
pendage, and in the conduct of the quarterly 
exhibitions which we resolved to hold " for the 
purpose of cultivating the tastes of any who 
might attend, and also in the expectation that 
we might at these exhibitions dispose of any 
works of art, such as sketches, paintings, or 
statuettes modeled in clay, which we should be 
able to furnish to the public." The "public" 
referred to consisted of mother, sometimes our 
brother, and friends who occasionally visited 
in the family. 

Full of enthusiasm, Mary, as "Provider," 
wearing her badge of office — a small baton 
carved and ornamented with ribbons — set 
about preparing the Studio. This was situ- 
ated in an unfinished chamber, the easel, which 
was of home manufacture, and which, shining 



The Child. 39 

with paint of a dark mahogany color, was our 
especial admiration, standing in a dormer- 
window; while conspicuously arranged upon 
shelves which we had put up were paints, 
brushes, and a glass pallet, in lieu of the " bet- 
ter one" for which we sighed, but which we 
were unable to obtain. Around the room 
hung pictures of all sorts and sizes, among 
them a life-size portrait of mother, in oils, 
which had been banished from the parlor, 
owing to its lack of resemblance to -her in 
any other respect than that of size. Here and 
there upon impromptu tables stood vases of 
flowers, arranged with the rare delicacy native 
to Mary. A wide bench was placed before 
another window, upon which was a pile of 
clay of a peculiar color and consistency, which 
was finely adapted to our purpose as modelers. 
The mallet and the chisel lay beside it, and 
around the walls in its vicinity hung engrav- 
ings of the Greek Slave, Thorwaldsen's Twelve 
Apostles, and other celebrated statues. Here we 
worked with great enthusiasm, but with small 
results, owing partly to our lack of instruction 
or supervision. Still, as we often said, no days 
of childhood were more beautiful in memory, 



40 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

than those which we spent in "The Studio," 
working with clay, with pencils, or the brush. 
But our sketching excursions were the most 
unique occurrences. Picture to yourself a 
scene like this : An Indian Summer day, with 
the yellow haze hanging over it like a veil, or 
like 

"The smoky light" 

of Bryant's poem ; the woods aflame with the 
colorings of Autumn; the fields stretching 
away restfully, their year's work done. Slow- 
ly wending their way to the pasture along the 
river-bank behold two little girls, with sketch- 
books under their arms, picturesque caps upon 
their heads, and bows and arrows in their 
hands. One of them has, suspended by a rib- 
bon from her neck, a baton, with the word 
"Provider" painted upon one side. She leads 
a goat which carries well-filled panniers. Two 
shepherd dogs walk sedately in the procession. 
Away down in the pasture, under some great 
spreading tree, this curious caravan comes to a 
halt. The panniers are unpacked, their con- 
tents proving to be a small basket filled with 
luncheon, a bottle of spring- water, with a clear- 
cut rye straw to drink through, a ball of twine, 



The Child. 41 

a clasp-knife, to be used in exigencies, and a 
little sketching-stool. While the goat is teth- 
ered near a thicket of hazel-bushes the dogs 
roam here and there, following the trail of a 
rabbit, or making not very energetic and en- 
tirely futile endeavors to unearth a gopher on 
the hill-side. The girls lean against the friend- 
ly trunk of their chosen tree, and talk of the 
Indian mounds near by ; of the happy hunt- 
ing-grounds which Indian theology foretells; 
of Mayne Eeid's hunting -stories; of Eobin- 
son Crusoe and the Swiss Family Eobinson. 
Sketches are taken ; the luncheon is appropri- 
ated ; clusters of purple grapes are plucked 
from branches that droop over the path ; ha- 
zel - nuts are gathered, cracked, and eaten ; 
while snatches of simple songs and merry 
laughter tell plainly enough of the happy 
hearts that are pleased with these rural 
sports. 

Often a stroll is taken among the trees, 
which usually results in the discovery* of 
"Jack" — a favorite horse — ruminating, in 
some sense of the word, among clumps of ha- 
zel bushes. When this fortunate discovery is 
made, one of the young artists gallops home 



42 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

on the horse's back, while the other follows, at 
leisure, with the caravan. 

In a childhood so isolated many would, nat- 
urally, be the devices for obtaining amuse- 
ment. The foregoing scene is given as a 
specimen. 

Time would fail me to recount a tithe of 
the adventures, the hair -breadth 'scapes, the 
amusing episodes, the curious conceits of which 
our childhood was full. The novelty of ex- 
periences which every body might relate — pre- 
facing each with the time -honored formula, 
"When I was young" — is often increased 
when the resources for amusement are few, and 
the ingenuity, never more active than in one's 
early years, is taxed to supply this deficiency. 
With the exception of one family of children 
— who were our playmates for a few of the 
last years at Forest Home, and to whose fer- 
tile imaginations we owed the pleasure that 
many a merry adventure afforded — we were 
left to ourselves and to our parents for society. 
To the thoughtful love which sought for a vig- 
orous physical development, and for the culti- 
vation of kindly, truthful characters, instead 
of priding itself upon a precocious intellect, 



The Child. 43 

though at the expense of a suffering and puny 
frame, we can never be too grateful. With 
memories stored full of sunshiny days, in which 
were merry games, strolls through the woods 
and over the prairies, rides in the fields, work 
in the garden, we count childhood a sweet and 
blessed season, and turn with braver and more 
thankful hearts to face the labor and the wea- 
riness which future years shall doubtless bring. 



III. 



"And sometimes, it is even so! 
The spirit ripens in the germ ; 
The new-seal'd fountains overflow, 

The bright wings tremble in the worm." 

Willis. 

"And when the soul, struggling to be approved, 
Says, * Could I love' — and stops, God writeth loved." 



MARY was not precocious. 
11 First the blade, then the ear, then the 
full corn in the ear," was the wish of her par- 
ents concerning her, and the natural law of her 
development. At the age of ten she could 
sew tolerably well, had wrought a " sampler," 
could play a few tunes and quick-steps on 
the piano, could sing any thing from "Blue 
Eyed Mary" to "Dundee," had read the Bible 
through, knew the Catechism "by heart," and 
had been introduced, merely, to the three " com- 
mon branches" of an English education. 

Until she was eight years old her mother 
and the grand old Mother of us all were her 
only teachers. So well pleased was she with 
their instructions, and so loth to increase the 
number of her preceptors, that at the begin- 
ning of her school-life she manifested but little 
zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, and was not 



48 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

in the least ambitious. Unaccustomed to men- 
tal application, and loving shady nooks in the 
garden better than the rough bench at school — 
caring for birds instead of books, and more 
familiar with rambling than reading — it is not 
strange that her first summer at school was a 
solemn and unhappy season to the little girl, 
notwithstanding the efforts of her kind teach- 
er to make the time paks pleasantly. Many 
times each day did tears fall upon the pages 
of "Pinneo's Primary Grammar," especially 
where that most uncompromising "list of prep- 
ositions" stands arrayed. Often, with the 
weary foot moving to and fro as time-keeper, 
have I seen the little tear-stained face turned 
aside, while in whispered tones she "went 
through the A's :" " About, above, across," etc. 
But the mysteries of "Long Division" were her 
"Slough of Despond" that summer. Often, 
passing through " mother's room" when study 
hours were over, I have seen Mary sitting by 
her side and listening attentively, while her 
brightening face told that the problem was 
growing clear to her through the explanation 
of the only one who never grew tired of the 
little girl's importunities for help. Once she 



The School Girl 49 

came bounding out of this room with glowing- 
cheeks, and the brightest smile that she had 
worn in many days, exclaiming: "Oh, Frank! 
mother says if I learn to write well, and learn 
grammar, geography, and something about 
arithmetic besides, I needn't go to school any 
more in all my life, if I don't feel like it." 

A few years afterward, when Mary had be- 
come a diligent and successful student, her mo- 
ther reminded her of this agreement that had 
been made between them, saying that in those 
earlier years she had full faith that by-and-by 
her little girl would be as fond of solving dif- 
ficult questions in mathematics as she was then 
of finding out how many blue jay's eggs there 
were in the fir-tree nest, or of obtaining an idea 
concerning the height of the hay-rick by sliding 
down the sides of the same. 

After her mournful apprenticeship at learn- 
ing Mary was allowed to remain out of school 
for a year or two ; when, awaking to a sense 
of her deficiencies, she became clamorous for 
those very opportunities which had been a 
source of so much pain to her a little earlier. 
She was sent to a new school, conducted by 

Professor H , a highly-educated gentleman 

D 



50 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

of the neighborhood. From the day that he 
became her teacher she was earnest and untir- 
ing in her efforts to acquire an education. Her 
lessons always demanded her attention first; 
amusements came afterward. 

The conscientiousness that was always prom- 
inent in her character and life was particularly 
marked in her deportment at school. Many 
pupils seem to regard school regulations as ar- 
bitrary strictures unjustly imposed, which must 
be observed, from motives of policy, while the 
teacher's eye is upon them, but which are to 
be utterly disregarded when they are left to 
act their own will. The fact is painful that it 
is rare to find a school-girl who will not, under 
any circumstances, break the smallest regula- 
tion: for example — who will not violate the 
rule that no communicating shall be permitted, 
by motioning to a fellow-pupil, to point out the 
lesson for the day, or to pass a book from the 
opposite side of the desk. Mary never did 
even this. To her conscience the word " com- 
munication" included all means by which an 
idea might be conveyed from^one mind to an- 
other. Surrounded by thoughtless girls, many 
of whom would speak without permission when 



The School- Girl 51 

they felt sure of escaping detection, she would 
shake her head, deeming that no violation of 
rule, since it was but an attestation of her un- 
swerving allegiance to authority. And when, 
as was occasionally the case, some friend who 
very seldom transgressed would, in an exigen- 
cy, make some inquiry of her unpermitted, she 
would look up regretfully, then, with a smile, 
would lay her finger on her lip, and cast her 
eyes upon her book again. Yet, though so 
rigidly adhering to her views of right, she was 
so cordial, so helpful toward her schoolmates, 
so merry in play-hours, that she never inspired 
the feeling of coldness so often manifested to- 
ward the decidedly "good girls" of a school. 

The Female College at Milwaukee, Wiscon- 
sin, was the scene of Mary's first labors as a 
student away from home. In this excellent 
institution, under the care of an aunt who was 
one of the teachers, and to whose thoughtful 
kindness Mary owed most of the happiness of 
the entirely happy months spent there, she 
made fine progress, and preserved her moral 
sensitiveness unalloyed amidst many tempta- 
tions. But at the Northwestern Female Col- 
lege, Evanston, Illinois, she spent most of her 



52 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

school days ; and from this institution she grad- 
uated in 1860, at the age of seventeen. That she 
completed the college course thus early is suffi- 
cient evidence of her aptitude for and diligence 
in study. Under the guidance of kind and faith- 
ful teachers she thoroughly mastered studies 
that were sufficiently abstruse to tax the pow- 
ers of minds much more mature than hers. 
Though very social in her nature, she relin- 
quished the pleasure of associating with her 
friends at their various entertainments, and, 
though it was a stern sacrifice to one of her 
tastes, caused it to be understood among them 
that her studies required her attention at all 
times during the week except on Friday even- 
ing and Saturday afternoon. Indeed, she can 
not be called a model in respect to intellect- 
ual industry; for she unconsciously exerted 
herself beyond her strength, especially during 
the last year of her life at school. It was 
most interesting to watch her growth. Phys- 
ically the robustness of childhood gave way to 
the slight and graceful figure of youth, which, 
' though pleasing to the eye, gave little promise 
of the strength that is necessary to make one 
equal to life. Mary was above the ordinary 



The School- Girl 53 

height, and possessed unusual grace of carriage 
and sprightliness of manner. Her face grew 
pure and spiritual with each added year of 
study and experience. Looking upon it, one 
could not help believing that a kind and guile- 
less heart had its expression there. 

"She was the well-beloved of all" 

who came to know her truly ; who penetrated 
the reserve which surrounded her, yet was 
not permitted to become unpleasantly appar- 
ent, so well was its tendency corrected by 
the air of kindly frankness which character- 
ized her social hours. But even then a deli- 
cate perception discovered the fact that "thus 
far shalt thou come, but no farther" was an 
inexorable law of her nature. She had a 
sufficient amount of good taste, however, to 
avoid with care that appearance of mysteri- 
ousness which many young ladies seem to 
think charming, and which raises a suspicion, 
even in the most charitable of their friends, 
that a sickly sentimentality, fostered perhaps 
by the reading of ill-selected novels, is mani- 
festing itself in this way. 

From such a charge, as we have said, Mary 
was free. Her nature was a healthy, hearty 



54 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

one. Her wants were few and simple. She was 
not hard to please. A sunset scene, a picture, 
a bunch of flowers, would give her genuine and 
not short-lived enjoyment ; while friendly words 
and smiles were the warmth and the light in 
which her nature unfolded its rarest qualities. 
To her every thing was religious. Her 
great strength, notwithstanding many endow- 
ments, was in her earnest purpose to have the 
mind that was in Christ; to perceive God in 
all the scenes and to acknowledge Him in all 
the actions of her life. Hers was not a fever- 
ish, morbid piety ; it was vigorous and normal. 
It was not prisoned in her closet nor between 
the lids of her Bible ; the fragrance of a Christ- 
like life was not alone upon her Sabbath-day 
attire, but its sweetness purified each word and 
action of her common history. To love and to 
be loved was her aim; "to do good and lend, 
hoping for nothing again ;" to carry the crystal 
of truth in her hand unsullied, undefaced by 
the least approach toward falsehood; to walk 
with one hand clasped in Christ's, the other 
reached down for the comfort and sustaining 
of 

"Whatever beneath her might creep and cling:" 



The School- Girl 55 

these were the dearest wishes of her heart. 
Very early in life these tendencies were mani- 
fest. Before she was five years old, her broth- 
er, then thirteen, signified to his mother his 
wish and intention to be a Christian. He in- 
vited his sisters to join him in a prayer-meet- 
ing on Sabbath evening. Mary was always 
present, and was very earnest in her little 
prayers. Soon she too came to her mother, 
saying that "she loved God, and would like to 
be a Christian if she were old enough." When 
at school she attended the meetings held among 
the pupils, and always prayed, though making 
no profession at that time of being changed in 
her purpose of life. Indeed, she never referred 
to any particular occasion as the scene of her 
"conversion," and no marked change was no- 
ticed by her friends in a life always strangely 
pure and true. She spoke but little about her 
feelings, upon what she sometimes called " The 
One Subject in all the world." But her life 
talked. To do was the first verb in her creed ; 
to say came afterward. But strangely com- 
bined with this earnestness and devotion was 
that subtle spirit of humor which wreathed her 
lips with smiles and mellowed her tones with 



56 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

laughter. Charles Lamb was not more genial. 
This loving-hearted girl shrunk before the sting 
of sarcasm ; her wit has its symbol in the play- 
ful pinch which a father gives to the cheek of 
his roguish boy, or the pretended bite which a 
mother prints upon the tempting, snowy shoul- 
der of her babe. The most exquisite illustra- 
tions of this peculiarity we must forbear to give, 
as they involve personalities from which they de- 
rive their character, and which delicacy requires 
us to keep unseen by any save familiar eyes. 

Mary's journals will tell the story of her 
growth during the season that we would de- 
scribe as no other pen than hers can tell it. 
The careless, childlike sentences are given 
just as she wrote them, in her graceful, girlish, 
hand. During her school-life she had not 
time for any writing beyond the exercises re- 
quired by her teachers. The extracts which 
follow were nearly all of them made from a 
journal kept early in her eighteenth year, just 
after she left school. 

March 5, 1860. — This beautiful morning 
dawns upon my seventeenth birthday. Truly 
is it said that this is the sunniest part of life, 
when the future lies like a pleasant land before 



The School- Girl. 57 

us ; when the present has no clouds, and the 
past seems good and fair. O kind and loving 
God ! on this happy, natal morning I give Thee 
unfeigned thanks for life and the blessings it 
has brought to me. From infancy, through 
childhood, up to youth Thy hand has brought 
me. Still keep and still preserve me, Father 
up in heaven, and grant that when unworthy 
I am taken from this pleasant, pleasant world, 
I may — through Thy great love — go to live in 
one still more beautiful, for the sake of Christ, 
our Saviour. — Dr. F. closed the Bible after his 
discourse at the chapel yesterday, with these 
words : " Brothers, with most men life is a fail- 
ure." What thought could be more sad than 
this? I'll try; oh, I will try to fulfill God's 
design in my creation as well as I know how ! 

April 29. — Since school commenced I have 
not written much in my Journal, for, as this 
term is my last, I am more heavily taxed than 
ever before. 

To-day, however, I need not deny myself the 
pleasure. This morning Dr. Foster* preached 

* Rev. R. S. Foster, D.D., President of the Northwestern 
University, Evanston, Illinois, preached his Farewell Ser- 
mon April 29, 1860, previous to leaving for New York. 



58 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

the last sermon in the presence of this people 
that they may ever hear from him. It is need- 
less for me to remark upon the merits of the 
sermon. As Dr. P. stood up before the large 
audience — for every seat and even the aisle was 
fall — he looked sad, though very calm. But 
when, at the close of the discourse, he ad- 
dressed the students of the University, his more 
particular charge, his feelings overcame him. 
The church was full of crying when he said : 
" I have loved you, and have been proud of 
you, young gentlemen ; I have cherished the 
same feelings toward you that a father has to- 
ward his boys. I think you have felt this." 
Then he told them that his greatest sorrow in 
leaving them was the remembrance that they 
were not all religious. He said : " My words 
of counsel and of entreaty that you should be 
good and true Christian men I hope you will 
not forget. You have heard them in public 
lectures, and in private, when no one but your- 
selves was present. Let them not be forgot- 
ten." He stopped and covered his face. We 
all wept together in silence — the noble man and 
those who loved him. After a brief pause, he 
said : "I must master myself sufficiently to re- 



The School Girl 59 

peat the request that I have made — let them not 
be forgotten" 

I seldom cry, but then I could not help it. As 
Dr. F. stood before us saying farewell, I thought, 

"If I should ever win that home in heaven 
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray, 
In the great company of the forgiven," 

among the radiant faces close by God's throne I 
should see that of this great, good man, whom 
"none know but to love, and none name but 
to praise." 

Without date. — Several weeks have passed 
since the above was written, and many changes 
have taken place, some of which have been con- 
nected with myself. I have " graduated" since 
then. My school days, viewed " as such" (to 
use Dr. D.'s frequent expression), have closed, 
though I hope my days of growing wiser may 
never come to an end. I shall not dance in the 
sunshine nor walk in the shadows of a school- 
girl's life agy more. The daily round of du- 
ties, half pleasant, half wearisome, is ended ; 
and though I may regret it by -and -by — at 
least so certain " grave and reverend seigniors" 
have said — I am not sorry yet. I will try to 
cultivate my mind by reading and by associa- 



60 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

ting with intelligent persons. God has placed 
me in the midst of friends whom I love very 
dearly. I am almost happy ; and if I were a 
Christian I should be very happy indeed. I 
wish I were a Christian ; and yet it is foolish 
to wish. Why do I not say that I love God 
because He is so good to me, and that I will 
try, in Christ's strength, to do those things that 
He requires ? This is all the demand that the 
Bible makes of me. I should feel very much 
ashamed if I did not say as much as this in 
speaking of an earthly friend to whom I owed 
every thing that his love and his power could 
give me. Why can I not act as reasonably to- 
ward God, instead of saying, "I wish that I 
could say and show by my life that I am grate- 
ful?" Eevelation and my intellect show me 
the relations in which I stand to the Euler of 
the Universe as plainly as I see those in which 
I stand toward the Governor of the State in 
which I live. In both cases I am the inferior; 
but the degree of my inferiority differs infinite- 
ly. How it is that I can not readily take hold 
of things spiritual He whom I would worship 
knows much better than I, and to Him I will 
earnestly pray for light and peace. 



The School- Girl 61 

Harlem, near Chicago, August. — As Frank 
and I sat here reading, Clara came running up 
stairs, and said, "Oh, girls! ma says a man 
was just now killed on the track when the cars 
passed." 

How the thought shot through my heart! 
A man killed — so near us — while we were so 
painless and calm ! 

It makes no difference to me what man it 
was, for I don't know any one here; only I 
hope that he was good. He is out in that 
strange eternity now, and stands before the 
Judge of all worlds, to give an account "for 
the deeds done in the body;' 7 and perhaps, oh ! 
perhaps his sins have not been blotted out by 
the blood Christ shed for us. But be this as it 
may — whether the change to him has proved 
for better or for worse — he knows the answers 
to many of those wonderful questions which 
we vainly ask all our lives long. Ah ! to the 
wisdom of that poor laboring man the acquire- 
ments of all the theologians on earth are not to 
be compared. 

After all, this is a sober world, and we ought 
to take warning by this terrible event that has 
transpired so near us, and try to live for a bet- 



62 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

ter one, where nobody is killed by the cars, 
and no hearts are broken by the loss of those 
they love; where nothing ever "hurts or de- 
stroys" — for all the paths up there are paths 
of peace. 

August 28 : Uvanston. — This fall and winter 
I intend to spend more time in reading than I 
have ever done before. For I am very igno- 
rant about books; and this worries me, though 
I don't blame myself for it, since I studied as 
well as I knew how all through my school- 
days, and of course had no time for miscella- 
neous reading. I've written to F. to make out 
a list of such books as she would like to have 
me read, and I will abide her instructions. I 
do wish to be something more than a common, 
unintellectual girl, whose mind is filled with 
"floating fancies," in which some black-eyed 
or blonde mustached Adolphus acts a con- 
spicuous part. I believe there are subjects 
more worthy even of a girl's thoughts than this 
which I have indicated. We are told that 
" every thing is beautiful in its season ;" and I 
have no wish to " antedate the day" when " an 
affair of the heart" shall engross my attention. 
If I should live to be a woman-— and I pray 



The School Girl. 63 

that this may be the case — I shall have a no- 
bler, truer character, if I give all my strength 
to the pursuit of earthly and of heavenly wis- 
dom for several years yet. So father and mo- 
ther often say, and I know it is the truth. 

But, after all, the " one thing needful" is 
what I care for more than for all other bless- 
ings. Oh, if I only felt that I had love and 
faith toward God ! If I could realize His pres- 
ence, and. that He is my nearest, dearest friend, 
should I not then love to pray to Him? I 
wish that some one would make me know these 
things, I think about them in such a dreamy 
way. Sometimes the thought flashes over me: 
Where shall I go when I die? and it frightens 
me very much. But at other times I am indif- 
ferent to this idea. I almost dread to grow 
older — to walk steadily on through these pleas- 
ant days toward that narrow, narrow bed where 
I must lie at last. 

Tliursday evening. — In my room. I am hav- 
ing a private prayer-meeting, and am almost 
resolved to have one every Thursday evening 
while good people are at the church holding 
theirs, unless I should decide to go there my- 
self. I have looked out through the window 



64 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

into the clear sky and up to the beautiful mobn, 
and wondered where God is. I have imag- 
ined a great somebody in a great somewhere 
who is full of strength and kindness, and I've 
prayed that I might believe, then trust, then 
love. 

September 13. — I went to prayer-meeting to- 
night, and listened to the petitions offered so 
confidingly to the God I know not of. Yes, I 
do know of Him though, for I've lived in a 
Christian land, and have had religious parents 
to teach me about Him. And yet I don't, and 
yet I do believe. When I pray, and try to 
think Who it is that hears me, and how it is 
that He hears me, I find it rather hard. Often 
in the daytime I look up into the sky, and im- 
agine that God is up there somewhere. I try to 
get a grand idea of Him, and think of all the 
stars as great worlds that He has made ; of this 
wonderful earth on which I find myself placed, 
and of myself, more strange and wonderful 
than all the rest. But I don't think of Him 
as all around me, .His nature shutting in my 
soul on all sides as the air closes around my 
body. It seems to me that I can not pray to 
abstract infinity — to something stretching on 



The School Girl. 65 

and on like space. What would mother say 
if I should tell her about my troubles? Frank 
is gone, or I would talk with her. 

What do Christians think of, I wonder, when 
they pray ? 

Why have I never been converted? I have 
been to the altar several times to show that I 
wanted to be good, and the people prayed for 
me — the kind, Christian people — and yet I 
didn't feel any better. To-night our pastor 
asked those of us who wanted to be Grod's chil- 
dren to manifest the wish by coming to the 
altar, but I didn't go. I came home feeling 
very sad, and yet, when we were talking and 
laughing down stairs a few minutes afterward, 
I found that it didn't take much to drive off my 
sober feelings. I've just been reading in the 
Bible, and it says that God is pleased with a 
broken spirit, and that He waits to receive all 
those who sincerely desire Him, and that He is 
anxious to help us on in every thing good and 
holy. Oh, is not some of this for me ? Thou 
who dost hear prayer, whether we are conscious 
of it or not, teach me how to do Thy will ! 

September 9. — What a fearful thing has hap- 
pened since I wrote last ! While we lay slum- 



66 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

bering peacefully on our pleasant pillows scenes 
of wretchedness and death were passing out on 
the lake, where we have loved to sail when it 
was smooth and blue. The steamer Lady El- 
gin, bound from Chicago to some northern 
port, and carrying three hundred passengers, 
was wrecked on Friday night during a violent 
storm, two or three miles from here. Three- 
fourths of the entire number on board were 
lost. It is frightful to think of men who had 
never cared much about God, who had not 
tried to please Him in their lives, as being ush- 
ered into His awful presence without a moment 
for repentance ; and of delicate, beautiful la- 
dies, tenderly shielded from pain and danger 
ever since they were born, left at the mercy of 
the furious, yellow waves — shrieking for help 
as they drifted helplessly a while ; then went 
down under the waters away from warmth and 
light — away from life that had been so sweet. 
All day long the waves have been bearing 
to the shore in their mighty arms the lifeless 
forms of those very dear to some one some- 
where. Many were borne to the land in this 
way who were still alive, and most of these 
were rescued by brave hands — hands that 



The School- Girl. 67 

were faithful because there were great Chris- 
tian hearts behind them. Many of those who 
were thus saved knelt on the wet sand and 
thanked God for their lives; but one man, 
when he was taken from the water, cursed bit- 
terly because his wife was lost. Christ pity 
him if he never repents ! 

Oliver says that he saw the body of a beau- 
tiful young girl lying on the floor down at the 
depot, and he thought from the expression of 
her face that she had been in life as proud 
as she was pretty; one who, perhaps, woulcl 
hardly have spoken to the rough sailor who 
lay dead by her side. But we would not 
judge her ; God has done that already. I hope 
they will 

"Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care; 
Fashioned so slenderly, 
Young and so fair." 

Suppose that I had been upon that steamer? 
How I should have cried " God pity me !" as 
the awful waves swept on ; and yet, though I 
was safe in my father's house, I need His pity 
almost as much now. 

Sabbath evening. — I can not go to church to- 



68 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

night. Oliver was tired after trying to be of 
rise to the people who were wrecked, and I 
couldn't go alone. Perhaps it is as well. I'll 
try to be good up stairs in my room. God is 
here as much as elsewhere. I'm going to read 
the Bible and to pray. "What if I should 
be converted here alone ? I didn't get along 
very well with my Sunday-school class to-day. 

With the exception of — — and , none 

of them manifested much interest in any thing 
we talked about. I think these two try to get 
their lessons, and they are a comfort to their 
poor, trembling teacher, who feels that she is 
hardly fit to point them to the Gk>d of whom 
she knows so little. I will try to be patient 
with the more careless members of my class, 
for Christ loves to see us patient, and I am 
very anxious to please Him. 

Now I'll read "Dick on a Future State;" 
that's one of F.'s favorite books, and I am sure 
that I shall like it. 

Tuesday evening. — I have been reading 
James's "Anxious Inquirer," and there is a 
passage in it so extremely well-suited to my 
case that I will copy it: "Many inquirers seem 
to have no hope or expectation of good but in 



The School- Girl 69 

connection with means. If they are cut off 
from sermons, even occasionally, or have not 
precisely the same number and kind of ordi- 
nances as usual, they are gloomy and despond- 
ing, fretful and peevish" (just as I was inclined 
to be on Sunday night because I couldn't go 
to church); "and hence do not only get no 
good, but much harm, by their unbelief and 
bad temper." 

The author says we must first know, then 
feel, then act. He says that " a new heart" 
means a " new and holy disposition." 

September 10. — I have been reading that 
same good book again ; and when I finished 
it, I knelt down and prayed earnestly to 
God to give me faith — to give me every 
thing, for I have not one good thing to start 
with. 

I know that God will answer my prayers if 
I have faith ; but must not he give me that ? 
How can I get it for myself? And yet, I'm 
afraid I have more than I admit. If I thought 
there was no hope for me I should probably 
lose my reason ; and yet, when I half know 
that I am saved, I doubt God still ! 

Oh, what patience must be in His heart! 



70 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

September 11. — Last evening I went to class- 
meeting and told the kind Christian people 
that I wanted to be good. I was very much 
frightened before I began to speak. My heart 
beat until I seemed to feel it leaping against my 
side, but strength was given me to declare in 
public my determination to seek for a true life 
henceforth. To do this I thought reasonable 
and my duty. I have been educated to believe 
that one must come out boldly "on the Lord's 
side" in this world, where those who are on 
Satan's side make no secret of that fact. So, to 
me it was a necessity to make this public an- 
nouncement of my purposes. When I had 
done so my heart, that had fluttered so pain- 
fully, became suddenly quiet. The hurricane 
that had swept over me was past, and I felt so 
queer, so still. 

After that I didn't think about the people 
who were all around me ; the honest, earnest 
words of Mr. P., the leader of the meeting, 
were unheeded for a while. I thought I saw a 
bright place far up in the sky, and in it shone 
a star. I felt sure that God was up there ; I 
forgot my weakness, my sins, and darkness ; I 
thought only of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the 



The School- Girl 71 

world — my Saviour — and I clung to Him. Per- 
haps I was converted then ? * * * * 

September 15. — I have been thinking of my 
Sabbath-school class and studying the lesson 
which, in my weakness, I am to explain to 
them to-morrow. It has worried me to remem- 
ber how thoughtless some of them are, so much 
so that they don't even bring their Bibles to the 
class nor seem to appreciate any thing. But I 
see that I have sometimes judged them harshly. 
None of them is worse than I was, doubtless, 
at her age, and some of them are much bet- 
ter. But even if they were a great deal worse 
than they are, I ought to remember how pa- 
tient God has always been with me, though in 
His sight very wicked, and forgetful of what I 
owe to Him. 

Sabbath morning. — The day is bright and 
beautiful as "the holiest of the seven" would 
naturally be. I am going to God's house, 
where I will pray that I may worship Him 
"in spirit and in truth." 

September 18. — To-day I have been reading 
in Smiles's " Self-Help ;" a book which stimu- 
lates me to renewed earnestness in the pursuit 
of The Good, The True, and The Beautiful. I 



72 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

have practiced my music lesson three hours ; 
learned my lesson in German, and written a 
synopsis of Carlyle's "Essay on Burns" in a 
book that F. gave me for the purpose of re- 
ceiving any notes or comments that I might 
like to make upon the books I read, and which 
is, to me, like the counting-house to the mer- 
chant, or the office to the lawyer, a kind of toil- 
ing place. I know that it is profitable for me 
to write in that nice, new book,** with its gilt 
edges and brown morocco binding; but after 
all, this plain little Journal is the place where 
I enjoy myself most truly. When I write here 
I feel as the business man does when he comes 
home from town, dons his dressing-gown and 
slippers, and talks of pleasant matters with his 
family, forgetful of the day's labors and cares. 
[Here follows a pledge written in the Jour- 
nal and given to Mary by a member of her 
Sabbath-school class — one to whose consider- 
ate behavior she owed much of the pleasure 

* It is to be regretted that we are unable to give to the 
reader specimens of the racy, piquant style of Mary's com- 
ments upon the books that she read, owing to the fact that the 
book above referred to has mysteriously disappeared during 
the compilation of these extracts from her Journal. 



The School Girl 73 

which she felt in acting as its teacher, and who 
attributes her awakening and determination to 
lead a new life to the earnest appeals made to 
her by Mary.] 

September 19, 1860. — This is the diary of my 
dear friend and Sabbath-school teacher, Miss 
Mary E. W , to whom I make the follow- 
ing promise : I will read my Bible and pray 
every night before I lie down to sleep, from 
this time forward as long as I live. And in 
Sabbath-school I will try to set a good example 
to the other scholars. Ella J . 

Below this Mary has written : 

" These things my dear Ella promises not in 
her own strength, but in that of our kind Fa- 
ther who is in heaven." 

Thursday evening, September 20. — To-night, 
in prayer-meeting, a strange lady, who wasn't 
at all pretty, but who, I'm sure, was very good, 
prayed in a way that impressed me very much. 
One sentence, I remember, was like this: "O 
Lord ! we thank Thee for the past, we praise 
Thee for the present, we trust Thee for the 
future." 

What a beautiful, confident faith! It is 
pleasant to believe that this lady will be fair 



74 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

and lovely looking when we see her in hea- 
ven. 

I wonder if the angels do really look down 
upon us, as Mr. M. seems to think, judging 
from what he said to-night in church. They 
sang one hymn that thrilled me, as the rich 
tones of all those earnest men and women 
joined in one — 

"We're marching through Immanuel's ground 
To fairer worlds on high." 

There is something which inspires me in that 
word " marching." 

A band of faithful Christians marching up to 
God, to receive a crown of everlasting life from 
Him ! To each of us the time is coming when 
there will be no more probation, no more op- 
portunities given to "try again," when Grod 
will say that he has waited long enough, has 
given us light enough, has had patience enough, 
"It is finished" 

September 22. — I have been reading Burke's 
"Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful." 

He says that the idea of beauty includes di- 
minutiveness, smoothness, variety — where one 
thing melts into another — and weakness. That 
we love objects which are beautiful ; hence 



The School Girl 75 

we love these concomitants of beauty. The 
persons who creep into our hearts and are 
most fondly cherished are not those who pos- 
sess.unusual strength either of mind or of body ; 
for though we may admire, we do not instinct- 
ively love such as those last named. In the 
first- place, every thing that we love we con- 
nect in our minds, if not by our words, with 
the idea of smallness. The word " Darling," 
our most sacred term of endearment, means 
"little dear." Secondly, Beautiful objects are 
not rough and angular. We have smooth 
leaves and flowers. We are pleased by the 
sight of a smooth, unmarred complexion, etc. 
Thirdly explains itself. Fourthly, Modesty 
and timidity add to the idea of beauty, as they 
flatter another by the feeling of being looked 
up to and honored. Fifthly, Beauty depend- 
ent is enhanced in its charms. Persons who 
are self-reliant and self-sufficient are rendered 
by those qualities unlovely. 

Which, now, for a girl like me, is most de- 
sirable? It seems to my judgment that "a 
golden mean" between self-confidence and self- 
distrust is more admirable than either of the 
extremes. This I will seek. 



76 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

~ Memorandum. — When I am ricli buy for 
myself a velvet dress of the same color as the 
jelly that was on the tea-table this evening. 

Sabbath Day. — In Sabbath-school Mr. M. 
made an interesting little speech to the chil- 
dren. He is a theological student, who will 
leave Evanston in a few days for India. He 
goes as a missionary. I am not personally 
acquainted with him, but I can not help re- 
specting and liking him for his courage and 
self-sacrificing spirit. He told the children that 
he " was going away over the sea to tell the 
poor, ignorant people there about every body's 
best friend, Jesus Christ." Should I be strong 
enough to make a sacrifice like this ? Ought I 
to be willing to go to India ? 

Later. — Mr. M. came home with Oliver to 
dinner. He has just said good-by to us and 
gone. Frank and I gave him a bunch, of he- 
liotrope and arbor vitae, and he said that he 
would keep them always. 

September 25. — I've just come from a meet- 
ing held in the church this morning on ac- 
count of Mr. M. Dr. Dempster spoke briefly 
to the audience, and Mr. M. said a few touch- 
ing, farewell words. Then Miss K. played the 



The School- Girl 77 

li accompaniment, " while four gentlemen sang 
that solemn missionary chant : 

" My soul is not at rest ; 
There comes a strange and secret whisper to my spirit 
Like a dream of night, that tells me I am on enchanted 
ground. 

Chorus. 

"The voice of my departed Lord, 
'Go, teach all nations!* 
Comes on the night wind 
And awakes my fears ! 

"Why live I here? The vows of God are on me, and I 
may 
Not stop to play with shadows or pluck earthly flowers 
Till I my work have done, and rendered up account. 

"And I will go, I may no longer doubt, 
To give up friends, and idle hopes, 
And every tie that binds my heart to thee, my country. 

"Henceforth it matters not if storm or sunshine be my 
earthly lot, 
Bitter or sweet my cup, I only pray 
God make me pure, and nerve my soul 
For the stern hour of strife. 

"And when I come to stretch me for the last, 
In unattended agony, 

Beneath the cocoa's shade, it will be sweet 
That I have toiled for other worlds than this. 



78 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

" And if one for whom Satan hath struggled as he Tiath 
for me 
Should ever reach that blessed shore, 
Oh, how this heart will glow with gratitude and love ! 

Last Chorus. 
1 c Through ages of eternal years my spirit never shall re- 
pent 
That toil and suffering once were mine below." 

I know that Mr. M. liked this, and will be 
strengthened by the memory of it when he is 
away over the sea, and we are all going on as 
before. 

I went to the depot, in the long procession, 
to see him off. We all stood on the platform, 
singing 

"From Greenland's icy mountains," 

as the train from the city came steaming in. 
I could hear Mr. W.'s clear voice above the 
noise of cars and engine. Mr. M. sprang into 
the nearest car. He threw up a window and 
put out his hand. Many friendly hands were 
thrust eagerly forward to grasp it. I looked 
at him earnestly, for I knew that I should 
never see his face again, and he looked up 
and bowed. The whistle sounded, the train 
moved off; and while we waved our handker- 



The School- Girl 79 

chiefs and the gentlemen swung their hats we 
all sang, with tears in our eyes, or in our 
voices, the last verse of that glorious old 
hymn: 

"Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, 
And you, ye waters, roll 
Till, like a sea of glory, 
It spreads from pole to pole." 

Though I don't know Mr. M., I will pray that 
he may reach India in safety ; that he may do 
good on earth and be saved in heaven. 

September 30. — While reading Dick "On a 
Future State" to-night, a funny idea came into 
my head, though I'm almost ashamed of that 
word in connection with such a book. But 
the idea was just this : that we live on one of 
the smallest worlds in the universe, and that 
we are in some respects the silliest creatures 
that it contains. Think of it ! Little Prince 
Albert Edward, simply because he will proba- 
bly at some future time be ruler over a small 
bit of the northern part of one of God's smallest 
worlds, receives more homage from a majority 
of the people than G-od himself, who not only 
rules all worlds, but made them out of no- 
thing, and gave to the young Prince of Wales 



80 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

his life, which, whenever He sees fit, He will 
take away from him. 

' ' Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue.'' 

October 2. — Mr. V., our Sabbath-school Su- 
perintendent, called last evening. He talked 
to me very kindly about the life which Chris- 
tians lead. I think he acts as one who is to 
be a minister should act ; introducing the sub- 
ject of religion in a friendly, unhackneyed 
way, speaking of it as he would of any other 
that was of great interest to us all. I know 
very few young gentlemen, however religious 
they may be, who speak of God or of our duty 
to Him when they are talking with their lady 
friends. I wonder if they are so much mis- 
taken as to think that we are too trifling to 
listen to any thing beyond the idle gossip of 
the day? * * * * * * 

And now my little book is filled. It has 
afforded me much pleasure to write here my 
thoughts. 

I shall keep this Journal and read it, with 
tearful eyes, perhaps, when I am old. 



IV. 

€§t f nxxtig lotoj. 



F 



"The blessings of her quiet life 
Fell on us like the dew, 
And good thoughts, where her footsteps pressed, 
Like fairy blossoms grew. 

" Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 
Were in her very look ; 
We read her face as one who reads 
A pure and holy book." 

Whittier. 

AFTER completing her course of study, 
Mary lived quietly at home for two 
.years before she went away 

"Unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
And Christ himself doth rule." 

These years were the richest of her life. The 
progress that she made in them was matter for 
surprise. Perceptions multiplied ; every thing- 
had a message for her, to which she listen- 



84 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

ed eagerly; nothing w'as trivial, nothing was 
tame. Her scope widened, almost perceptibly, 
with each added day. 

Existence was a rare, exhilarating draught. 
She recognized the wonderful and loving Fa- 
ther-soul as holding the chalice to her lips, and, 
while she drank, she raised her eyes to Him in 
sweet thanksgiving. She had her father's and 
her mother's tenderest care; the companion- 
ship of studious minds ; free access to the best 
books ; Nature, whose loving pupil she had al- 
ways been, to sing her Te Deum Laudamus in 
her hearing; to spread out the lake with its 
hue of steel and the mysterious suggestions of 
its murmuring waves ; to arch the firmament 
above her; to shelter her among trees; to 
strew her path with flowers. And more than 
this, these years were spent in one of the love- 
liest of villages, where Minerva presides as tu- 
telary divinity ; where, instead of the usual 
noise of hammer and of saw, denoting the in- 
dustry of which our country is so justly proud, 
the hourly bell, summoning students to their 
recitation room, is the most familiar sound. 
Three literary institutions in successful opera- 
tion give to the village its character, and attract 



The Young Lady., 85 

to it an unusually refined society. Such enthu- 
siasm in the pursuit of knowledge — such love 
for truth and devotion to progress as are always 
found in educational centres, could not fail to 
influence strongly a nature so receptive and 
assimilative in its genius as Mary's. Perhaps 
she needed less than many do the influence of 
the deep, religious sentiment found here ; yet 
even she could but be stronger for its effect 
upon her sensibilities. For here, on every side, 
men good and noble speak eloquently in favor 
of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
Men of commanding influence and liberal cul- 
ture lead before us lives of childlike simplici- 
ty and puritjr, perform noble charities, and 
encourage every enterprise that is intend- 
ed to help forward the interests of humanity. 
These beautiful influences could hardly have 
been brought to bear upon one more sensitive 
to them than Mary. Each pure and noble life 
plead with her, not vainly, to seek for noble- 
ness and purity in her own ; every kindly, gen- 
erous deed made her emulous of like action in 
her more limited circle of influence. And thus 
she grew constantly in beauty and richness of 
life. I know that whatever is lovely and true 



86 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

and of good report was very much, in her 
thoughts. And oh ! in a world where there is 
much, that hurts us — much that discourages and 
saddens, how refreshing and sweet is the mem- 
ory of this kindly life that was lived among 
us ; of the pleasant words that were spoken ; 
the genial manner which made it a happy thing 
to sit by this young girl's side, to look into her 
sunny face and listen to her voice. For she 
never was harsh or unkind ; she was so sensi- 
tive herself that she never wounded others. 
She had none of that bluntness, mistaken by 
some for candor ; none of that coldness, affected 
by some through pride, which wounds when 
balm is needed ; which pains when the cry is 
for peace. One of her favorite rules of action 
she expressed thus : " I try not to hurt people ; 
I try to remember, even in trifles, what will be 
kindest and pleasantest for them; and thus I 
plead with them to be careful of me in return ; to 
be considerate and not to wound me. Though, 
for Christ's sake, I think I would act in the 
same way independent of this motive." 

As fully as so much can be expressed in a 
few words her aims during these years were to 
grow in the knowledge and love of Grod, and 



The Young Lady. 87 

in obedience toward Him; always this above 
every thing else, and through, all other aims; 
to help others to be good and happy ; to light- 
en her mother's cares; to cheer and amuse 
her father after business hours, with music, 
song, and well-told story of the day's expe- 
riences; to be faithful as a Sabbath-school 
teacher ; diligent in preparing the lesson for 
the week ; prayerful for each member of her 
class ; kind and earnest in her counsels ; con- 
sistent in her example; to be obliging and 
thoughtful of the comfort and happiness of 
every one with whom she had to do ; to neg- 
lect none of her duties as a member of the 
Church or of society; to grow wiser in all 
those things which make one more accurate 
in judgment, more cultured in intellect, more 
tolerant in spirit, more appreciative of what- 
ever is beautiful and good; to learn some- 
thing of those accomplishments which adorn 
and heighten the more solid acquirements of 
a young lady. 

These purposes — perhaps we might more 
justly say these instincts — of life, in no respect 
overstated, will surely bear a favorable com- 
parison with those usually cherished by young 



88 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

ladies in our day, and are worthy of a mo- 
ment's serious reflection from any one who 
reads this page. Pause a moment, fair-faced 
friend, and compare with your own these am- 
bitions of a merry-hearted girl, rendered re- 
pentant by no great sin, chastened by no great 
grief. « 

To the unconscious portrayal of her own 
character we will now leave her, carefully avoid- 
ing any betrayal of our sacred trust as a com- 
piler, but certain that the charming simplicity 
of her style and the freshness of her thoughts 
will be more pleasant to our readers than any 
extended analysis of her qualities or descrip- 
tion of her life. 

October 3, 1860. — This winter, then, I am to 
spend at home. My brother and sister are 
going away to teach — to be of use in the world. 
I have sometimes read in books, and once 
or twice I have heard persons say, that in 
wealthy and fashionable society a teacher i§ 
looked down upon. I can not understand 
this. Surely God sent us into the world to 
work for Him in whatever way He should ap- 
point. It makes me proud that O. and F. are 
doing this. I would like to be of use as well 



The Young Lady. 89 

as they, but I am to wait for a while yet. It 
is all right, no doubt ; I am too young to go 
away, so father says. I ought to be very 
thankful that I have such kind friends to take 
care of me here, and I will try to improve my 
time,, praying that it may be improved for 
eternity. 

— Our friends from the East did not arrive 
to-night, as we had expected; as will not a 
great many things in our lifetime ; so we — so 
I— should begin to bear disappointments with 
fortitude. Eain is falling on the autumn leaves 
as I write, and the clouds look gloomy, but the 
heart can have its sunshine all the same, if it 
tries. Well, I will try to have a happy heart. 

October 4. — Our friends have come. Aunt 
B. I had not seen for ten years until this 
morning. She is a gentle-looking lady. She 
has had a toilsome life, just as we all must have 
if we wish to develop beautiful characters. 

— I advanced a theory to father last night 
which I hadn't thought much about then, but 
which I am half inclined to believe, viz. : It is 
better not to form particular attachments, but 
to love every body in a general sort of way. 
The greatest task of an affectionate person's 



90 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

life is holding on to his heart, for it is a whim- 
sical organ, and sometimes, before its owner is 
aware, it has run away from him without so 
much as saying "By your leave;" and then it 
must be taken into custody, and punished with 
many stripes, so that it will remember to stay 
in next time. But there is an argument on 
the other side that, until reading an essay of 
Emerson's recently, I had never thought much 
about, i. e., that personal affinities are the rounds 
of the ladder which leads up to God. We love 
the divine in certain characters, and separating 
it from the taint of the human we are drawn 
toward the sun of beauty and perfectness, from 
which these manifestations in our friends are 
only stray rays. I rather doubt this last, 
though I can not quite tell yet. One thing is 
certain : God has told us to love every body as 
we love ourselves (that is, I suppose, do by 
every body as our conscience tells us we should 
think ought to be done by us under similar 
circumstances). I'm sure I would like to do, 
this, and I think I can — if I am helped. j 

— Father has gone to the depot to meet Aunt 
C. I'm very eager to see her, and don't wait 
with much patience. I like change. This 



The Young Lady. 91 

is the reason that I go to parties with such a 
cheerful, willing heart, while though 0. and 
F. go too, it isn't because they wouldn't pre- 
fer to stay at home. This shows, perhaps, 
that I haven't what my father calls " resources" 
in my own mind for enjoyment. But I com- 
fort myself by reflecting that I'm " ower young" 
yet, and if I study, as I will, some day I shall 
have " resources" like the other wise people. 
It is, I must acknowledge, a source of much 
embarrassment to me to talk with persons 
whose knowledge could easily swallow up a 
hundred "knowledges" like mine; but since 
this is not my fault, I guess it is foolish to fret 
about the matter — so I won't. 

October 7. — I went tQ, the city yesterday. 
While I was carelessly riding on the swift 
train (which, though we are all so used to it, is 
without danger none the less), God took care 
of me, and didn't let any harm come to me. 
So I rode home from the thoughtless city, 
while the beautiful sunset flamed along the 
sky, and I was very glad to see the dear old 
place even after so brief an absence as one day. 

— Uncle W. is quite sick to-day, and I am very 
sorry. It reminds me that I must be sick some- 



92 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

time when I shall not get better; that there 
will come a day in which I must die. O 
God, help me to prepare for the wonderful 
change that every hour brings nearer to 
me! 

— I am happy, and it is not strange, for these 
beautiful autumn days seem as if they had 
come down from heaven. 

October 8. — Aunt 0. has come. She is a splen- 
did lady. She has had so much trouble that 
her voice is always sad, but it is very sweet. 
She seems so gentle and so meek that she in- 
spires love and sympathy in every one who 
knows her. But her meekness is not the dog- 
ged kind that makes one submit because he 
must ; nor the silly kind, that shows a person 
too weak to resist; it is a patient, Christ-like 
endurance of suffering. And all the time she 
tries to be cheerful, and smiles in her sad way. 
Here are some verses which she repeated to me 
this evening in a voice so mournful that I al- 
most cried : 

"I wear a rose in my hair, for I feel like a weed ; 

Who knows that the rose is thorny, and makes my tem- 
ples bleed ? 

If one but reaches his journey's end, what matter how 
galled the steed? 



The Young Lady. 93 

"I gloss my face with laughter because I can not be calm ; 
When you listen to the organ do you hear the words of 

the psalm ? 
If they give you poison to drink it is better to call it 

balm. 

11 Though I scatter gold like a goblin, my life may yet be 

poor; 
Can love come in at the window when money stands at 

the door? 
I am what I appear to men — need I be any thing more ? 

"God sees from the high blue heaven — He sees the grape 
in the flow r er; 

He hears the life-blood dripping in the maddest, merriest 
hour ; 

He knows what sackcloth and ashes lie hid in the pur- 
ple of power. 

"The broken wing of the sparrow he binds in mid-air; 
I am not w T hat I shall be in heaven ; then soul ! no more 

despair! 
Remember the lowly Jesus, and wipe His feet with thy 
hair." 

— To-day I called on Mrs. B., the "good Sa- 
maritan" of our village. She asked me how I 
succeeded in trying to be a Christian just in 
the same happy, everyday voice in which she 
told me she was glad that I had come, and so 
she didn't frighten me a bit. I wouldn't mind 
it if I were always spoken to in this way ; but 



94 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

I am greatly distressed in my heart when any 
one — a minister, for instance — comes up to me 
and says, in a constrained and hollow voice, 
without one prefatory word, "Well, my young 
friend, I would like to inquire concerning the 
present condition of your precious soul." I 
hope it isn't wrong in me to say that I think 
harm is sometimes done by speaking of relig- 
ion in such a stupid manner. — I've been read- 
ing to-day about Cranmer, Latimer, and Kid- 
ley, who sacrificed all, even their lives, for their 
religion. Ah ! there must be something super- 
natural in the spirit that they showed. 

13th. — To-day I ran in to see a minute, 

and she said something to me carelessly that 
hurt me very much. But I only laughed, and 
made a trifling remark to conceal my true feel- 
ings and the wound that she had given me, so 
she will never know what she has done. The 
world will say things hard to us all the way 
through our journey to the grave. Sometimes 
this will be done thoughtlessly, sometimes in- 
tentionally ; in any case, it is well to be pre- 
pared for the blows that we shall certainly re- 
ceive. 

Evening. — Just at twilight I went walking 






The Young Lady. 95 

down on the lake shore with my pleasant aunt. 
We talked a while about my cousins, of whom 
I know so little, and then she wandered away 
from me searching for curious stones. I laid 
my cheek on the cold pebbles, and while the 
waves came rippling close to my face, I thought 
how little difference it would make to the world 
or to the murmuring lake if I were dead. I 
tossed the wee stones at my side into the air, 
or "skipped" them along the water, as if I were 
a child instead of a young woman of seventeen 
whole years. By-and-by my aunt came back, 
and we walked to our home among the trees 
near by, and she didn't know what had been 
going on in my foolish heart down by the mys- 
tical waves. 

18th. — It seems to me that our life has anal- 
ogies with a religious gathering known as 
"camp meeting." If we attend a meeting of 
this kind we must have a tent, some sort of a 
bed, cooking utensils, and food. We must 
work a little to prepare our meals, etc. ; but this 
is not the object for which we have assembled. 
It is of no use for us to go merely to take care 
of our tent. We must attend the religious 
Services — we must sing and pray — we must try 



96 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

to do and to get go6d. Neither were we sent 
into this world to have our time and our 
thoughts entirely occupied with " getting a 
living," but in order that we might prepare 
for eternity — lay up treasures in heaven. And 
yet we do not remember this. Some strive for 
one object, some for another; but each seems 
anxious that he may rise above his fellow-be- 
ings, so that he may look down upon them, 
forgetting that God looks down from high 
heaven upon us all, and in his sight one is bet- 
ter than another only as he is more loyal to 
Him. 

— Very soon I am to receive the ordinance 
of baptism. I look forward to the time almost 
with dread, for I am naturally timid, and to 
perform an act so public will be repugnant to 
my feelings. I do not shrink from it because 
it is a religious act ; for as such it is the last 
thing of which to be ashamed, and the first of 
which to be proud. Christ will surely help me 
through with it ; and I am glad that, though 
at a sacrifice of natural delicacy, I can show to 
those who know me that I wish in all things 
to be led by Him. 

— The weather is rather^ mournful to-day. 



The Young Lady. 97 

The leaves are dying, and the acorns rattle along 
the roof down to the ground — a place contrast- 
ing strangely with their former high position ; 
like rich folks who get poor; though they still 
more resemble smart poor folks, who, by sundry 
availing exertions, though they lie low down 
for a while, are afterward seen going up in the 
world, just as the acorns will grow up toward 
the sky again, if they improve their opportu- 
nities. The lake tosses uneasily in its great 
cradle, while the stars — for it is evening now — 
wink and blink up there in the heavens in a 
most indifferent manner, as well they may, 
since they have nothing in the world to vex 
them — they and I. 

— Why was I a figure in the problem of life ? 
Indeed am I a figure at all, or only a cipher 
placed thus: 0123, so that I make the " answer" 
neither more nor less ? Oh, I know better than 
that! God has work for me to do — "even 
me." 

— My friend Mattie has been telling me of the 
luxury in which an acquaintance of hers lives. 
Why, she doesn't work a bit; no, nor even 
puts on her shoe. When she goes from room 
to room, tossing things about, as is her custom, 
G 



98 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

a servant follows her and quietly re-arranges 
Chem. Her study is to look pretty all the time. 
She laughs a great deal (very sweetly, to be 
sure), because she don't know how to talk ; she 
don't know hardly any thing ; never reads, and 
can't bear books ; don't like to be left alone, 
because she has no beautiful thoughts with 
which to entertain herself. She can speak 
French a little, can play a few pieces on the 
piano, and that's all — except that she is an el- 
egant dancer. 

While Mattie was telling me about this girl, 
I (and I'm not rich, and have no servant to 
wait upon me) pitied rather than envied the 
petted child of Fortune. How much finer it is 
to sit in my little plain room, beside a good fire, 
with some wise book in my hand, than to be 
straightened up in the parlor talking foolishness 
to " (h)airy nothings." A fig for her elegance 
and wealth without knowledge, intelligence, or 
even one serious thought. God pity such peo- 
ple ! say I. 

— (It is October, but what day of the month I 
don't know, and it makes very little difference.) 
I have been reminded to-day of the great com- 
pensating system in this world (Emerson, I 



The Young Lady. 99 

think, has set forth the idea in an " exhaust- 
ive" manner), without which I don't see how 
we could "get on." I have observed that, as 
a general thing, homely people are talented, 
and handsome ones are stupid ; that the rich 
have ease, and the " moderate" class have 
knowledge — all of which seems highly just and 
proper. As I sit here writing by lamplight 
the sun is over on the other side of the world, 
and the merry Chinese are hopping and skip- 
ping, working and cheating, with his burning 
face looking down upon them. But to-morrow 
he will turn to us again, and they will clatter 
off to their beds in their queer, little shoes. 

Sabbath Day, 28th of October. — As I was com- 
ing out of church this morning, Mary B. whis- 
pered, M Do you know that Mrs. S. is dead ?" 
I felt so strange when she said it — as if some- 
body had struck me in the face. I didfr't know 
Mrs. S. very well ; the tidings didn't hurt my 
heart ; but I knew that death had been among 
us — that was enough. One more soul be- 
fore its God, one more grave in "Kose Hill," 
one more heart-broken orphan ! Philosophers 
may speculate upon the Future that awaits us, 
but they know very little, and only confuse us 



100 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

by their conflicting 1 theories. Of all that go — 
the timid and the fearless — none come back to 
tell us any thing, though I am sure that many 
would if it were possible. We can solve the 
problem for ourselves; we must solve it, wheth- 
er we will or not. This, then, shall be the ob- 
ject of my life : to grow rich in love and faith 
toward God — to prepare my soul for the great 
trial that is surely coming. 

November 7. — Very soon we shall know who 
is the new President of " these United States." 
I hope that it is honest Abraham Lincoln : and 
if it had been the fashion I would have voted 
for him; which fact, could he but know it, 
would doubtless be a balm to his wounded 
spirit in case it proves that the lordly portion 
of creation have not elected him. 

— I took for my music-lesson to-day one of 
Beethoven's grand compositions. A man with 
music in his soul is, in some sense, a stray 
angel, wandering among us poor benighted 
ones. 

November 22. — The first snow is falling. 
Why have I been sitting here with my hands 
folded for this long time? What have I been 
thinking about, and won't any thing break this 



The Young Lady. 101 

painful stillness? I've " practiced the scales" 
until my fingers are tired, and I've looked at 
the piano-keys until they seem like great teeth 
grinning at me. Somehow I don't feel well. 

November 29. — This is the day set apart for 
public thanksgiving to God. I like the cus- 
tom. It is pleasant to know that thousands of 
grateful hearts are sending praise to u the Fa- 
ther there above" in the same breath. Sandal- 
phon's hands must be full of flowers this morn- 
ing. 

— Christmas is on its way to all the world. 
We don't think very much about the real sig- 
nificance of this beautiful season, I am afraid. 
Parents ought to teach their children that 
Christmas means something more than the 
coming of Santa Claus and overflowing stock- 
ings in the chimney corner. For little chil- 
dren, with their unstained hearts, find it very 
easy to receive Heaven's choicest Gift to man. 

January 8. — A little while ago Frank came 
in and said: "Have you heard from Mr. 
B* since I went out?" We told her we 
had not. She had a very serious look, but 

* Rev. C. P. Bragdon was our pastor at the time. He 
had been ill for several weeks. 



102 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

only said : " What are you prepared to hear?" 
Mother, in her calm, collected way, answered : 
"I am prepared to hear that he is dead." I 
dreaded to have Frank speak again. She 
knows how sensitive I am to every thing con- 
nected with that mysterious change which 
awaits us, so she hesitated a moment before 
she murmured: "Yes, he is dead." I felt 
curious and heavy. I leaned back on the 
cushion of the lounge. I wrote " Dead 11 upon 
a piece of paper that I held in my hand. Then 
came strange thoughts of the whitened face on 
which our pastor's wife and daughters are gaz- 
ing now with grief, of which we can have no 
conception ; of the spirit that we shall never 
see looking out from his kindly eyes again. I 
thought of him as having gone — up some- 
where; but all was shadowy to my poor 
earthy sense. Perhaps he sees the angels! 
Perhaps he has strange, penetrating eyes, and 
can look upon both worlds — the earthly and the 
heavenly ! Perhaps a thousand things that we 
don't know any thing about, for all is dark to 
us down here — all except Christ; but He is 
very near, and very certain, and very manifest 
to those who love Him ! 



The Young Lady. 103 

January 20. — I called on Mary B. to-day. 
Her pale, sad face tells how full of grief she 
is, now that her father is dead. Her occa- 
sional smile is put on only for generosity's 
sake, I am sure ; it doesn't ripple up from her 
heart to her lips, caused by some pleasing 
thought thrown in, as the brook ripples around 
the stone cast into its sunny waters. All the 
stars in her poor heart have set ; for she says 
in this great sorrow the hopes she used to 
cherish are forgotten. Oh ! I will try to cheer 
her up, all that I can. I will be a good friend 
to her. There are not many to whom I can 
be a comforter ; for our little village has but 
few sad hearts, that I know about, at least. 
I'll set pretty flowers on Mary's pathway, now 
that she is too weary and heart-broken to do it 
for herself; and I — who have no grief, whose 
faith in God has had no test as yet, who am 
not blinded to his love by some dark Provi- 
dence — will tell her there is light, for I can see 
it; — that His arm is stretched out to sustain 
her; that she will please both of her Fathers 
in heaven by laying a trustful, loving hand on 
that great arm which holds the world. 

February 2. — I do not like the habit — so com- 



104 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

mon among school-girls — of telling all one's pri- 
vate affairs to some " dear familiar friend." If 
such things must be told, the home-folks are 
the proper confidants; but I think that if a 
"special regard" for a "particular individual" 
should befall me, and if I felt that I must in 
some way find relief for my burdened spirit, 
I should take just one person aside, and after 
extorting solemn promises of secrecy, I should 
relate the fact as clearly and concisely as pos- 
sible; and the person whom I should select 
would be my highly esteemed friend, 

Ego ipsa. 

[With this astute assertion we close our ex- 
tracts from the second volume of Mary's Diary. 
It is, in all respects, a characteristic book. The 
girlish autograph on the fly-leaf; the odd cari- 
catures put in at random among the entries; 
the little sketches of articles of furniture or ap- 
parel ; of a ring on a friend's finger ; of herself 
suffering from toothache, and with swelled 
cheek and closed eye; the quotations from 
books that she was reading, scattered here and 
there throughout its pages; and the frequent 
hieroglyphics, whose meaning few can decipher ; 



The Young Lady. 105 

all serve to illustrate the peculiar, many-sided 
character of the girl, and for this reason we re- 
fer to them. 

The second volume of her Diary, written 
after she left school, and having for its first 
date February 16, 1861, is, in its execution, 
superior to its predecessor, and was evidently 
written with more care. In a clear, careful 
hand is written on the first page, 
"Talks with Myself," 

and this passage from the Psalms : 

" Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, 
all ye that hope in the Lord."] 

February 17. — Frank has gone with Mary to 
the city to-day, and I am alone in our pleasant 
room, a plain little place, but more to me than 
all the house besides, or all the houses in the 
town. It is odd, perhaps, but I feel a peculiar 
friendliness for every piece of furniture that it 
contains. 

— Mary played the prettiest "piece" last 
night that I have ever heard. It made me feel 
so queer ; it met my expectations, and, for the 
moment, I was satisfied. Beautiful music in- 
toxicates me as wine might. It makes me feel 
as if there were nothing that I could not do. 



106 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

P.M. — The girls have come home again. 
From their talk I would think that they had 
a fine time, for they saw that wonderful paint- 
ing, " The Heart of the Andes." How beauti- 
ful it must seem to come in from the cold, 
snowy street and to see the tropics before you, 
with the brilliant birds and flowers, and those 
great mountains towering in the distance, as 
Frank has told me ! 

February 24, Sabbath Day. — This morning we 
had one of Bishop Simpson's soul-stirring ser- 
mons. I regard him as a holy man. When he 
is excited while preaching his face glows with 
a light which, to me, seems supernatural. I 
think I listened to his sermon attentively, but 
before he commenced preaching my head was 
full of " out of place thoughts." For example, 
I wondered what the people would do if a 
beautiful girl should ride into church on a 
pretty little pony, and should turn him about 
before the pulpit so as to face the audience, 
and sit there in a pretty, contemplative attitude 
with the handle of her riding-whip against her 
lips. I wondered if they'd let her stay or 
make her go out ; and then I thought I'd like 
to push back Charlie 's hair : it had fallen 



The Young Lady. 107 

so far down on his forehead, and to tell Mrs. 

that her collar was awry ; while all this 

time I sat demurely in unchanged position, with 
my hands resting on the top of father's "Hymn 
and Tune Book." Well, I am sorry that my 
thoughts wandered, for I didn't intend that 
they should, and as soon as services com- 
menced I fixed my attention upon things good 
and holy. It is impossible, I suppose, always 
to keep one's mind from wandering. 

March 1. — Mother walked quietly up to me, 
a few minutes ago, and took my German book 
out of my hands. I suppose I am hardly well 
enough to study, though I am very sorry to 
fall behind my class. 

March 2. — I fear I am not thankful enough 
for all the pleasant gifts of life. O God! make 
me good ! Make me loving toward Thee all the 
time ! Let me go forward every day ; I can 
never get too near to Thee. Forgive me for 
being sometimes forgetful ; and oh ! grant that 
when Tm dying, I may be the happiest. 

— Frank and I have just come up from the 
sitting-room, where we left father, mother, and 
Oliver ; the first, sitting in his easy-chair by the 
fire ; the second, lying on the sofa and casting 



108 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

many amusing remarks into the conversation ; 
and the third, playing with Frank's little dog. 
As we came in from tea this evening and sat 
around the fire, talking and laughing, I thought, 
indeed, we were a very happy family. 

— I've. been reading "Daisy Burns," a pleas- 
ant story by Julia Kavanah. In these lonely 
invalid days I have owed much to devoted 
little Daisy, to kind, strange Cornelius, and 
ready, generous Kate. I have been with them 
for a long time, only in such a way that they 
were not disturbed, and away from my sick 
self. 

March 17. — They have all gone to church, 
leaving me here alone. It is cold and snowy 
out of doors, and in my heart there is a wish- 
ful, regretful feeling which I can not explain ; 
but I am far from being unhappy. There are 
not many graves of dead hopes in my spiritual 
burying-ground, for I've had few in the first 
place, and in the second they have seldom 
died, and in the third it has hurt me but little 
when they did. No, I don't believe in young 
folks making sorrow for themselves. Never 
allow foolish fancies to "put up" and take the 
"spare room" in your hearts, my friends. It's 



The Young Lady. 109 

a sad thing when one arrives at the conclusion 
that 

"This world's a wilderness of woe." 

The w's roll in musically along the line, but 
the sentiment might be the chorus of misery. 

March 20. — I have just come from the kitch- 
en, where I have been a prominent actor in the 
creating of a cake to go toward increasing the 
preparations for an entertainment soon to be 
given hereabouts. Society is an institution 
which is rapidly becoming nonessential to me. 
One can not make a friend of it. While he 
is present it will treat him very well, but 
if absent he is soon forgotten. To be sure, 
there is another side to the question, what are 
we to society? Suppose that a drop, imag- 
ining itself to be ill used, should repiningly 
propose to separate itself from the ocean, and 
should indignantly cast itself upon the shore, 
who would lose most, the rebellious little drop, 
or the gray old ocean? Let me refresh my 
judgment by considerations such as this, lest I 
attach undue importance to my foolish young 
self. 

— As I was quietly sewing up in my room 
to-day mother's voice resounded through the 



110 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

hall in the use of these words:. "Mary, come 
down, I have something for you." So, with 
much alacrity, I descended to her room, and 
what do you suppose she had the kindness to 
bestow upon me ? Nothing more nor less than 
a dose of cod liver oil ! Nothing but a dose, 
did I say? What could be worse or more 
heart-sickening ? What else gives to a person 
a more horrid, "all overish" feeling, than that 
same oil of cod's liver ? Oh, may I never re- 
member the taste of it, never reflect on the 
smell of it, never more gaze on the sight of it, 
and may speedy destruction seize on the rest 
of it, there in the long yellow bottle ! 

March 30. — I have been reading "Life in the 
Iron Mills," a story in a recent number of the 
Atlantic. It is written in a strong, new style ; 
the thoughts are expressed with such earnest- 
ness, it is evident that they came from the 
deep places of somebody's heart. The ques- 
tion with which one rises from reading the 
story is this : Why are some high, and others 
low, in life ? We can not tell : it is a mystery. 
Yet to one who trusts in God the thought of 
His infinite justice silences questionings, and 
Faith whispers to Doubt: "What I do, thou 



The Young Lady. Ill 

knowest not now, but thou sbalt know here- 
after ;" and then, though the burden of life is 
heavy and grievous to be borne, the soul can 

sing, 

"Yea, what Thou doest, Lord, is right, 
And thus believing, we rejoice." 

April 9. — John, our " hired man," has just 
gone away. He has lived with us for years. 
During that time saved several hundred dollars, 
and now he is going to be married to a girl 
who has " waited for him." I'm sorry he has 
gone. He has always been a good servant, 
and we've had no reason to speak reprovingly 
to him in all these years. He liked us very 
much ; and the tears ran down his cheeks when 
he came in to say good-by, and father told him 
"to be a good boy" (though he's over thirty 
years old, I'm sure), and mother said we should 
remember him pleasantly, he had been so faith- 
ful to us. It made me sad to see him running 
off toward the depot, tucking the "check" fa- 
ther had given him into his pocket, and en- 
cumbered by his bundle and umbrella. He 
looked back a moment and said, amidst his 
tears, " So good-by to ye all, and I hope ye'll 
have good luck." As he passed beyond sight, 



112 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

among the trees, I prayed that God would bless 
him ; and I am quite sure that the golden gates 
of Paradise will be opened, some time, to hon- 
est, faithful John. 

April 14. — Dr. K. preached this morning, 
and I was glad to hear him say he thought 
there is a real place called heaven; that al- 
though God is every where, still His presence 
is more immediate and glorious in some other 
world than any that we have seen. It is more 
beautiful to me to think of golden streets, gates 
of pearl, and the River of Life ; it is more de- 
lightful to believe that real music will greet 
finer ears than ours, and ethereal perfumes will 
regale a more exquisite sense than we can now 
imagine; that rich colors and delicate tints 
shall be pictured upon retinas almost infinitely 
acute ; that great clouds of amber and of pur- 
ple shall rise about us, and that snowy wings 
shall sway to and fro in grand and stately mo- 
tion. I like to think that we shall still be re- 
lated to matter, though in some strange and 
blissful way ; and that thus we may be near the 
friends who were familiar, and the scenes that 
were dear, when as embodied spirits we lived 
upon the earth. This abstract heaven, extend- 



The Young Lady. 113 

ing any where, every where, but which is little 
more than an idea, I don't like to think about. 
Surely it is not wrong to try to have a picture 
of heaven for myself, as beautiful as my fancy 
can paint, since it affords me pleasure ? 

April 14. — News came yesterday of the evac- 
uation — we don't like to say the surrender — of 
Fort Sumter by Major Anderson. When I 
think of all the blood that must be shed, of all 
the treasure that must be expended to retrieve 
the honor of my native land, it almost takes 
away my breath. Think of the thousands of 
men, living at home and in peace to-day, who 
must fall in the strife ! How it hurts me to re- 
member that every man of them is somebody's 
husband or father, somebody's brother or son ; 
and that while they yield up their lives on the 
battle-field, the dear ones at home are many of 
them going to meet death by a longer path, and 
one just as painful to tread — the path where 
mourners walk clad in their sable robes. 

April 20. — Oliver has succeeded in getting 
up a great war enthusiasm in the minds of his 
two sisters this morning, by reading exciting 
passages from the daily papers and " interlard- 
ing" them with frenzied speeches of his own. 
H 



114 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

At last Prank and I broke forth with one ac- 
cord into singing the " Star-Spangled Banner," 
which, "by the aid of his melodious (?) voice, 
was rendered in a style that seemed peculiarly 
exciting to his imagination ; so much so that, 
when we came to the chorus of the last verse, 
he rushed into the closet for a broom, which 
he waved frantically to and fro to symbolize 
to himself the fact, as I suppose, that the glori- 
ous banner did yet wave "o'er the land of the 
free and the home of the brave." After vari- 
ous demonstrations of this kind he fought an 
imaginary battle with the bolster, to which he 
gave the name of " Traitor Jeff," while we in- 
spired him with valor by singing other patriotic 
songs. While this amusing scene transpired I 
thought, with a sad heart, " Will my brother, 
my only brother, go to the war?" We to 
whom he is so dear will try not to be selfish. 
The country calls for help ; somebody's brother 
must go, and why not ours ? Who are we that 
our hearts should not be broken as well as 
other women's hearts ? 

April 22. — These are strange times. Trains 
are running although it is the Sabbath. Sev- 
eral regiments from Wisconsin passed through 



The Young Lady. 115 

our quiet village while we were in Sabbath- 
school. It made my heart ache to think of the 
good-bys at home among the hills and prairies 
of my favorite State. 

April 23.— This evening we went to a war 
meeting at the church. "When the " Star-Span- 
gled Banner" was sung, as I joined in the chorus 
I was half wild with enthusiasm, though I stood 
there so quietly. Above the pulpit hung the 
national flag, arranged in graceful folds around 
a portrait of Washington, who looked serenely 
down upon us, as if confident that we would 
not desert a cause in which he thought no 
sacrifice too dear. Several speeches were m ade, 
and then there was a call for those who were 
willing to volunteer to come forward and sign 
the muster-roll. I shall never forget the scene 
that followed. Eapidly they went ; young men 
whom we all know and esteem ; students in 
college and in theology ; men who had wives 
and daughters looking after them, with smiles 
of pride on their lips though there were tears 
of sorrow in their eyes ; and beardless boys, 
with their slight forms and flushed young faces. 
Cheer after cheer went up from the excited 
audience as each one took the pen and wrote 



116 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

his name as a volunteer in the army that goes 
to save the Union. One young man told us 
that he did not join here because, although he 
came last week from a distant town to enter 
college, " he should throw books aside and re- 
turn home to-morrow to go with his father and 
his brothers to the field." Dr. M'F. was loudly 
applauded. He said that " he was a Virginian, 
and he should start for his native State to- 
morrow to join with his relatives, who are all 
loyal, in fighting for the Union. He said his 
mother was buried there, and he meant that no 
traitor should set his foot upon her grave." 

I am afraid that we didn't realize how 
solemn was the scene; how eternal destinies 
were being fixed that evening by a mere pen- 
stroke. God pity the man who is not prepared 
to die before he joins the army ! Oh, if we 
could have known the agony that will result 
from what was done then in the church we 
love so much, and where we have worshiped 
so peacefully together, I know we should have 
filled the house with sobs, and tears would 
have fallen like the rain that beat against the 
windows as though nature herself were griev- 
ing! 



The Young Lady. 117 

A large fund was immediately subscribed for 
the support of the families of poor men who 
will go into the army. The liberal subscrip- 
tions showed plainly enough the patriotism 
which glowed in each heart. It seemed very 

generous to hear Dr. E. give his name for 

hundred dollars, and hardly less so when seam- 
stresses, and young ladies who support them- 
selves by teaching, pledged themselves for the 
payment of smaller sums. 

War ! What a new meaning has the term 
for me since the fall of Fort Sumter only a few 
days ago ! Truly 

" We are living, we are dwelling 
In a grand and awful time ; 
In an age on ages telling ; 
To be living is sublime !" 

April 30. — The birds have come back to us. 
Their songs remind me of auld lang syne ; of 
the spring flowers that bloomed earliest on the 
great bluff's side south of " Forest Home." For 
the birds sang in this same way when I was a 
child, and F. was my only companion. I don't 
believe that I shall ever be much happier than 
I was then, when 

"We went plucking purple pansies," 



118 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

peeping into little birdsnests down in the pas- 
ture, or coaxing " Old Gray" with a handful of 
salt to submit to bit and bridle, and to gallop 
off through the fragrant clover-field with us 
upon her back, when father went walking 
with us down by the shady-banked river, or we 
strolled " out in the orchard" with mother. Oh, 
it was very pleasant to be a little girl ; but I'm 
"grown up" now, and must not look regret- 
fully to the merry, by-gone years. 

May 4. — A lovely morning for us all. When 
such light and beauty breaks over the earth, 
may it not be appropriately called a smile of 
God? My heart turned reverently toward 
"that great Heart which beats for all the 
world" as I sat by the window this morning 
while the household was asleep. I took up the 
Bible with unusual pleasure. It seems to me 
that some of these times, when I love God so 
well, and the Bible is so pleasant, I wouldn't 
be afraid to die. Surely He would not cast a 
soul out from His presence that wanted Him 
so much. 

May 5. — It is done. This morning, before 
services commenced, F. and I were baptized. 
We made those solemn vows before the church 



The Young Lady. 119 

and before God, to live for Him henceforth. 
We uttered the responses as though we had 
one voice, I know our parents and our brother 
were glad to see us kneeling at the altar — as 
we have walked through life — side by side. 
Our pastor's hand trembled when he laid it on 
my head and repeated those sacred words : "I 
baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Keep us, O 
Lord ! May we never forget those vows ! May 
we never love any one as we love Thee ! 

[Always, after this, among the books on 
Mary's table, I noticed a small one containing 
the Baptismal Service, and very often in the 
evening, before kneeling to pray, she would 
sit down and read it over. I can see the grace- 
ful, attentive attitude ; the brow leaning upon 
the hand, the sweet and thoughtful face, a mo- 
ment before bright with smiles, now serious as 
it was when she was but a child. Sometimes 
she would look up, and say: " Frank, wouldn't 
you like to hear me read our promises ?"] 

To resume the Journal for that day so mem- 
orable to her : 

— I never had the feelings of which many 
persons speak. It didn't come to me just in a 



120 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

minute that my sins were forgiven. No, it 
wasn't sudden, but gradually things changed. 
I thought of God with love ; the Bible seemed 
like a new book. I tried to do right harder 
than ever before, and felt that / was helped. 
But I have never been wondrously happy, as 
some are, though I feel very quiet and at peace. 
Sometimes the pleasures of life and the love of 
my friends rise up like a mist between me and 
God ; but I know that although we must ex- 
pect temptations, the penetrating rays of His 
glory and love will make all clear again, if we 
use Faith and Prayer. 

— Poor Irish Johnny has been " saying his 
A B C's" to me, as usual. He seems grateful for 
every kind word, but especially for his "les- 
sons," as he calls them. To-day we showed 
him a book of engravings that had pleased us 
very much when we were children. He looked 
at them all, in his grave, wondering way, and 
then said, "I must go to me mother;" and ran 
off down stairs. Poor little fellow! What 
will he do in this great, working world, I won- 
der? Why am I so much more blessed than 
he? God knows. How thankful I am for 
such unmerited kindness as He has shown to 



The Young Lady. 121 

me ! I think we should be very gentle with 
those beneath us, and very considerate of their 
feelings. If we all looked from our own posi- 
tions down the scale of human life, and less 
above us, how little complaining and regret- 
ting there would be, and we should all look up 
to God more gratefully ! 

— The true little dandelions are prompt tcf 
greet the merry month of May. There is a 
vase full of them on my table now, that had 
the kindness to grow just beneath the window 
of our room. It seemed so natural and spring- 
like to gather the little things this morning, 
just^as though they were not the first I'd seen 
since last year when Mary picked one from Pro- 
fessor J.'s garden border; and said "it wasn't 
stealing, for 'twas God's flower and not his." 

— And so I've filled another book with talk 
about my pleasant, pleasant days. Good-night, 
little friend ! I'll lay you away beside your pre- 
decessor, on the high shelf of the book-case in 
our room. 

[On the fly-leaf, at the end of the book, are 
written these lines : 

" A sense of an earnest will, 
To help the lowly living, 



122 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

And a terrible heart-thrill 

If you have no power of giving, 
An arm of aid to the weak, 

A friendly hand to the friendless ; 
Kind words, so short to speak, 
But the echo of which is endless. 
The world is wide, these things are small, 
They may be nothing, but they are All" 

And now comes the last book ; a large, blue- 
covered volume with many white, unwritten 
pages in the last part that will never be filled, 
and which she used to turn over and say, care- 
lessly, " I wonder what I shall write here ?" 

" What happens, and what I think about it" 
is written on the fly-leaf, and under it her name, 
with the words, 

"Aged eighteen."] 

May 22. — Just returned from a walk and a 
slight study of human nature. A sharp-faced 
person, in a rickety wagon, was driving at a 
furious pace an invalid horse, which seemed 
running for the purpose of trying to escape the 
cruel hands into which fortune had thrown 
him. I am sorry to say the driver was a wo- 
man; sorry that I have such a sister; sorry 
that Eve has such a child. But I should judge 
her gently. If I had been reared in the same 



The Young Lady. 123 

way I might have been like her. It puzzles 
me to think how many of the faults that we 
see are the results of training, for which the 
offenders are not responsible. Such matters 
as I can not understand I leave with Him to 
whose keen eye the threads of life, in our sight 
so sadly twisted, hang in an untangled skein. 
Sitting by the road-side I saw a little girl with 
a dandelion behind her ear, playing with an- 
other little girl who looked very much like 
her. Well, I did not draw any very definite 
conclusion from them that I know of. There 
are thousands like them ; God made them all , 
and as each little creature was led into the 
world by His hand, I believe He made a place 
for it; and this has always been a pleasant 
thought to me. 

— Mary B. saw me, and came out of her 
house, and we went together do'wn to the pier. 
We half closed our eyes and watched the sun- 
shine bristling on the water. I laid my head 
in her lap, and she told me about her journey 
East with her sick father ; how once she thought 
he would not live, and she was all alone with 
him, for though she had an acquaintance or 
two on the boat they were not what she needed 



124 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

then. Poor Mary ! But her father is in heav- 
en now. He isn't sick any more ; he sees no 
longer "as through a glass darkly, but face to 
face." Perhaps he can look into his daughter's 
heart every day and see the sorrow there. But 
if he does, he sees also the striving for a better 
life that mingles with her grief. Perhaps he 
can go right up to Grod, can take Christ's hand 
in his, and reverently beseech of them to bless 
his youngest girl. 

— Well, the day is wearing on, and I think I 
have not let it pass wholly unimproved. Mary, 
why were you born? This is a question that 
I can not answer yet. For something, I have 
no doubt; for what, I can not tell. As the 
closely folded leaves of the bud open steadily 
but without haste, so does my life develop. 
Very soon, it seems to me, the light must fall 
into my heart, as the sunshine into the flower, 
and then my mission here will be declared to 
me. That I shall live much longer for myself 
alone can hardly be, I think. Who is happier 
because of me ? Birds sing among the branches, 
flowers bloom, cool breezes fan my face, and 
the sky is deep and blue ; all make me happier 
and were made for that; but I am doing very 



The Young Lady. 125 

little toward following this beautiful example 
which nature sets so lavishly before us. I wish 
that I had more to do ; I wish that I knew 
somebody who needed me. Not that I would 
have any one in trouble so that I might have 
the privilege of relieving him, but because I'd 
like to do good in the world. Our little village 
is so quiet, and every one seems so happy, I do 
not see that I am needed here. 

Evening. — More beautiful to me than the 
merriest sunshine are the shadows, the breezi- 
ness, the murmur of this peaceful night. I am 
half happy as I sit by the open window and 
look out upon the white face fixed in the heav- 
ens, near the heaving, talking waters of the lake. 
How gr6at the Universe seems to me as I look 
upward toward the stars ! How I diminish^ to 
an atom and grow dizzy with my thoughts! 
How I try to lift my heart up, up above our 
world, and think of the Almighty ; think of 
Christ just beyond the sky up there — for he 
always seems in heaven to me, and yet, always 
watching us, and ready to help us weak, tired 
wanderers up to Him, above the stumbling- 
blocks upon which we are so apt to fall, only 
when we reach our arms to Him as a child does 



126 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

to its father, and ask Him to carry us. Give 
me such faith, God ! Fill my heart full from 
Thine own ! Make me love Thee best, forever ! 
Help me to appreciate more deeply what I am 
saying to Thee! Make me all, entirely Thine ! 

— What bubbles we are! On w T hat shore 
shall we break, by -and -by? Whither are 
we going? Why were we created? Ques- 
tions such as these has Mr. F. been putting 
forth down stairs to us all. I am glad he 
talked about these things : it made me think. 
After all, this is the great question : What is 
Life? What, what is this that stretches all 
about us, and we so small ? Why do we stop 
to play with the shells on the shore ? Why do 
these infinite nothings afford employment to us? 
Why will we think of them when God is all 
around us, watching (as Mr. F. said) to see if 
we won't throw them down and lift our hands 
to Him. O this living! — and I live! O mys- 
tic circle of eternity ! — and I must enter it ! If 
it were not for Christ, should we not each cry 
out, " Would that I had never been born ?" 

Saturday, May 25. — The startling intelligence 
came to us yesterday that father's old friend, 
Charles G., was dead. He was a man with a 



The Young Lady. 127 

fine, artistic mind, and a keen perception of 
the beautiful. He had such careless, original 
ways, that I always liked him, though I never 
knew him very well, because I was too young 
to talk with him. He hunted, fished, made 
sketches, and took a great interest in trees and 
flowers. His house wasn't like anybody else's 
house, but had curious windows, piazzas, etc. 
He first saw and loved the girl who became his 
wife one time when she was coming down a 
shady lane with a wreath of corn leaves around 
her head. His baby was swung in a ham- 
mock, instead of being rocked in a cradle ; his 
dogs and horses would play around him, and 
seemed to understand whatever he said to them. 
I have seldom seen him since I was a child; 
but I remember the piercing blue eye, and 
thin, brown face of the genial, sensitive man, 
the amateur artist, the poet, the friend. He is 
dead. 

— Henry said to-day, after a visit to Eose 

Hill Cemetery (Chicago) : " Since we must all 
come to this, why not as well at one time as 
another ? It will be said of us before long, 
4 They are no more.' Folks that we know will 
think about it. Those that we love will weep 



128 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

over it, and will say, 'Poor girl!' or 'Poor 
fellow V But it will gradually fade from their 
minds, even, until by-and-by they will think of 
us and not cry at all." It is better so, sorrow 
enough for each one who lives ; let us forget 
as much as we can. 

There is one thing that seems rather strange 
to me. When a friend dies, no matter how 
many faults he had, they are all buried with 
him ; but the good qualities, the worthy deeds, 
rise, like birds, above the mound, and float, sing- 
ing pleasant memories, around the white stone, 
or nestle in the grass over the grave. We take 
it for granted that all who are dear to us go to 
heaven when they die, even if their lives have 
not been all that we could wish. We think 
that some way they must be saved. We have 
forgotten their wrong deeds, and so we imagine 
that God has forgotten them too. 

In this connection I will mention a fact 
which has given me pain. Very often it is 
true that due appreciation of a character is not 
felt, or at least not expressed, until death, mak- 
ing heavy the ear of the sensitive soul, opens 
the lips of praise in its behalf. It is a pity that 
the thirsty heart goes through life unrefreshed 



The Young Lady. 129 

by the libation which is needlessly poured out 
upon the grave. 

May 30. — Eose this morning with a very un- 
pretty countenance. One side of my face doesn't 
match the other at all ; nevertheless I don't scru- 
ple to look in the glass once in a while, and smile 
at my ludicrous appearance. There is a sort of 
loss of balance, owing to the extra amount of 
cheek on the left — in some way connected with 
a toothache that has afflicted me for a few days. 
Mother says my mouth was always inclined 
to draw in that direction, but now all of my 
laughing is done on the right side, so that I 
may succeed in bringing that important feature 
around straight, and thus good may grow out 
of apparent ill. Moreover, I am inclined to 
laugh more than is quite " seemly" in a person 
of my years, and since I can not now perform 
said exercise with as much dexterity as for- 
merly, I may be cured of my fault — another 
good ; so I think I won't complain. 

— I've been reading for a long time this 
afternoon about Lady Mary Wortley Monta- 
gue, and I wonder why she was so smart ! At 
the age of twelve she wrote beautiful poetry, 
while I at that age was building play-houses ; 
T 



130 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

at fifteen she was busy with the project of es- 
tablishing a .nunnery in England, while I at 
fourteen went away to school for the first 
time, and learned to spell "big words," and to 
answer stupid questions " on the map." I sup- 
pose the solution to the problem of her great 
superiority is that she was born with about 
sixteen times as much brain as I, or with that 
amount multiplied by any figure that will bring 
the proportion high enough. 

But I won't fret, for if I'm not a genius I 
have a good time as the world goes, and know 
several things beside. 

Evening. — Another day, not altogether un- 
profitable to me^ has passed, and I'm in my 
little room alone. It isn't "ours" any longer. 
Frank doesn't sit at the opposite side of the ta- 
ble any more ; she's teaching again, away from 
home. I used to tell her every thing ; not al- 
ways just when I was most interested, perhaps, 
in my secrets, but sooner or later. And con- 
cerning her own affairs, I think she told me 
every thing ; if there was "any exception to this 
rule it wasn't because she wouldn't as lief have 
me know, for she told me so once. 

— When we see people, how many thoughts 



The Young Lady. 131 

go scampering through our heads concerning 
them that they never dream about! For in- 
stance : I am talking pleasantly with Miss Blank, 
but I'm thinking to myself, " Your bonnet isn't 
pretty ; I don't like your cloak ; your hair is not 
dressed in a tasteful manner," or something of 
that sort. Perhaps my reflections are just the 
other way; and I think, " How pretty you are, 
and witty too ! I wish I could say such things 
as you do." Well, every body who is talking 
with us is either thinking something far from 
complimentary, something for which, if we 
knew it, we should box his ears; or think- 
ing about our gifts and graces, but all the 
time appearing deeply interested in the subject 
of conversation, with which we're playing a 
game of battle-dore and shuttle-cock. " Miser- 
able hypocrites" I was about to call all of us 
who do so — and " us" includes every body in 
this case. But we're not to blame after all, for 
we can't help making mental comments upon 
what we see. But how fine it is that nobody 
sees the little ideas that go through our minds ! 
otherwise much needless pain might be felt. 
We ought to think as charitably as circum- 
stances will permit, however. By-the-way, 



132 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

that makes me think that I like a royal, unself- 
ish person, who, when he hears pleasant words 
spoken of another that the other would natu- 
rally like to hear also, will repeat them as 
heartily as if he too were glad they had been 
said, and glad to tell them. 

— The bell has been tolling. I don't know 
for whom or for what, but it has sent a solemn 
feeling into my heart. I dread to hear a bell 
toll. I listen in an unpleasant suspense for the 
distant strokes, and yet am startled when they 
come. How people are dying — dying all the 
time. It seems to me heaven must be almost 
full. What do they do up there? I wonder, 
oh ! I wonder ! — When a weary one has traveled 
until he has gained the door and knocked, how 
then do they receive him ? What does he see 
first ? What does he do first ? Don't it seem to 
our earth-bound minds that it would be more 
pleasant not to go alone ; to take our best friend 
by the hand, and so stand before the portal ? I 
ought not to say this though. I see the reason 
why it is unnecessary ; Christ is the Friend who is 
strongest, He goes with us when all others fail. 

Thursday morning, June 6. — Well, last even- 
ing we had a sociable at Mr. P.'s. I had a 






The Young Lady. 133 

good time I guess, at least I enjoyed the talk 
with Mr. F. ; but somehow such places are 
losing their charm for me. I don't learn any 
thing new by going that I know of, and I am 
quite sure J[ teach nothing new to any one else. 
I think the pleasure derived from such "gath- 
erings" is imaginary. People expect that they 
shall enjoy themselves when they go, and force 
themselves to believe that they've gained what 
they expected when they return. So the girls 
put on their best dresses, put flowers in their 
hair, and Cologne on their handkerchiefs, with 
ribbons around their waists, chains on their 
necks and rings on their fingers, and so go over 
to the Sociable. And the boys put on their 
best Sunday suits, with patent leather boots, 
pretty little garrote collars, with delicate neck- 
ties and perfumed hair, and then step over to 
see the girls who have gone to the sociable ; 
each hoping to produce upon the other a fine 
effect. Now they stand up and look into each 
other's faces and simper, and engage in small 
talk. How funny they look to a third person 
in the corner ! What does all this amount to ? 
Eoll it all up together, put a paper around it, 
and label it " Society," for that's what it is. 



134 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

Sabbath noon. — Heard a very good sermon 
by Professor H. When it was over the 
benediction was pronounced ; the people went 
out ! What were they thinking of as they 
walked through the door of the pleasant 
church, up the path among the trees, to their 
homes ? The tall and the short, the big and 
the little, the good and the bad. each had some 
idea, whether of importance or not, revolving 
in his head. What an odd book it would be 
that should contain them all ! 

— Our thoughts are like folks. There is the 
old maid thought, " far-fetched" and stiff; the 
selfish thought, like an old miser; the silly 
thought, like a Broadway dandy ; the beauti- 
ful, graceful thought, like a young lady ; the 
good thought, in the language of " veal," like 
the boy thirteen or fourteen years of age ; and 
once in a while there is the fresh, charming 
thought, like a little child. 

Our thoughts are like flowers. There is the 
great, blundering poppy thought, an old idea 
in pompous language; the startling, brilliant 
thought, like the crimson verbena ; the plain, 
common-sense thought, that is like the sun- 
flower ; the delicate, pure thought, which the 



The Young Lady 135 

heart helps to originate as well as the head, 
and this is like the violet. 

June 10. — Since writing the above I have 
ventured out into this cold world as far as Chi- 
cago, where I visited a class-mate, who by her 
sweetness and patience won the name among us 
all of "the angel without wings." She enter- 
tained me in the most hospitable manner ; but 
I was glad to get back to Evanston again. 
As the cars came steaming up to our de- 
pot here I saw a long line of theological stu- 
dents looking tremendously solemn, and a 
crowd of people standing on the platform. If 
it hadn't been that I knew Bishop Simpson 
was starting for California on that train, I don't 
say but I might have thought all that demon- 
stration was for me! To speak seriously, I 
could hardly keep from crying when the Bish- 
op said his farewell words to his neighbors 
and friends. As I stood there looking at him 
I said a little prayer, and the burden of it was 
that God would bring him safely back. I love 
him, for it seems to me he is the holiest man 
that I have ever known. 

— Four little children out in the sand oppo- 
site my window are chattering like magpies. 



136 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

How a little thing attracts their attention — how 
restless they are ! There, they have scampered 
away out of my sight. Once I was a child too. 
I wonder if I'm happier now than then ? 

— Sage conclusions of the owner of this 
book : — To read of experiences is more pleas- 
ant than to have them. To expect is more 
pleasant than to realize. Even to be in doubt 
about the possession of some desired object is 
more delicious than to possess that object. To 
be loved and I not care, is better than to love 
and others not care ! 

— Oliver has been recounting his exploits dur- 
ing the present summer. I am thereby re- 
minded to chronicle my own. Well, I've had 
the toothache and the sore-throat, the headache 
and the sleeps. I've staid at home and spent my 
time with these four delightful companions, 
until recently they departed, when I sat down 
and have twirled my thumbs up to date. 

Evening. — Went boat riding. Had a pleas- 
ant time. Notwithstanding, as A. said, " we 
didn't get into the lake, but the lake got into the 
boat." When we were far out on the water, I 
thought, if the boat should be upset, A. would 
save E., but I, perhaps, should drown, having 



The Young Lady. 137 

nobody to rescue me ; and then I wondered if, 
when they found me, after a cky or two, with 
my hair tangled with weeds and I looking kind 
of helpless and pitiful, they wouldn't be sor- 
ry, and say, "Poor child I" and think that I was 
rather "nice" after all? 

Sunday, July 7. — There's a bee poking his 
proboscis under the bonnet of every flower in 
the garden. Great flirt that he is ! but no worse 
than some specimens I wot of, who are of a 
larger size than he. This isn't Sunday talk. 
I'm sorry, but I couldn't help thinking of the 
queer old bee just for a minute. 

-^-There's a rare flower in the garden — I 
can see it from my window — that Mr. G. gave 
to my mother. It is drooping with the heavy 
rain. Though so frail it has outlived him 
who planted it there — who loved every flower 
so well, who rejoiced in nature under every 
form, and who has gone up now to the Source 
of all that'is beautiful on earth. 

— A peaceful love for God and Christ has 
been down in my heart to-day that I wish might 
never leave it, only increase eternally. 

Evening. — It thunders and lightens, and I'm 
afraid. I wonder what Frank is doing ? She 



138 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

always was afraid in a storm. I remember 
when we livechat Forest Home she used to put 
her head in mother's lap and ask her to sing, so 
as to have the evidence that she at least w r asn't 
frightened, and lie that way until the rain had 
ceased. Oh those were queer times ! Frank 
and I never dreamed of what was coming, nev- 
er thought of ourselves as being young ladies. 
I'm sure I never counted myself of less import- 
ance than I do to-day ; but I can hardly imag- 
ine myself the little girl that I am in the pic- 
ture that we keep under lock and key (for 
shame's sake), where Frank and I are repre- 
sented sitting, one on each side of a table, #ith 
one hand apiece carefully laid thereon, and our 
faces drawn down to a length suitable to the 
occasion (viz., in town, sitting for daguerreo- 
types) 1 One of my ears peers provokingly out 
from my bonnet, and the hand with a ring on 
it (my first possession of the sort) is placed 
in a conspicuous position. O, MaryW., can it 
be that you and your elder sister ever made 
the astonishing appearance here indicated ? Let 
me commend you for the good sense exhibited 
in keeping that picture in some sly place, 
where none of your present friends may re- 






The Young Lady. 139 

ceive the shock that a sight of it would inev- 
itably produce. 

— I've just received half a dozen ladies in the 
parlor. I dislike " formal calls," though not 
the callers by any means. I was won by Mrs. 
M'D. when she put her hand in mine as she 
went out, although she is almost a stranger, 
and said " Good-by," instead of the stiff " Good- 
afternoon, " accompanied by a stiffer bow, so 
usual nowadays upon such occasions. 

— When we look at people, how little we think 
of all the trouble that has attended their " grow- 
ing up!" What u perils by land and by sea" 
have they passed through ! how many have been 
their " hair-breadth 'scapes!" what hard work 
somebody has done to provide each one of them 
with three meals every day, and with clothing 
in sufficient amount and adapted to the season ! 
Yet there they stand by you, as calm and com- 
posed as if they had " growed," in the first 
place, like Topsey, and lived as carelessly ever 
since as she did with Eva and St. Clare. 

— When we see % lame person, or one who 
is blind, how little we comprehend the awful 
agony that he must have endured for weary 
months, or even years, after the accident, to 



140 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

be as well as lie now appears ! Every heart 
knoweth its own bitterness. Doubtless each 
shall have just as much pain as he can bear ; 
and it is merciful that even through sympathy 
we can not partake all of another's woe. 

— I've just been watching a rainbow ; it is 
almost gone now. When I saw that beautiful 
thing reaching to the horizon on the north and 
south, I thought the earth was like a great 
basket full of leaves and flowers, and the rain- 
bow was the handle to it. 

— Mollie L. has just been here. I like her for 
several things, and one is because she dresses 
so neatly and appropriately on all occasions. 

— I have been reading about a Tournament. 
The victor was, according to the custom, to 
select, from among the ladies present, the one 
who should be crowned " Queen of Beauty and 
Love." I have a morbid desire to read pf pretty 
women and handsome men, handsomely dress- 
ed. It is like looking at a splendid picture. 
Sometimes it suits me as well as music, I believe. 

— I have been thinking^how strangely peo- 
ple'act about religion. Their conduct in turn- 
ing away from it is no more sensible than if a 
person should stand on the brink of an awful 



The Young Lady. 141 

precipice, and say, "Now I shall jump down 
here and be dashed in pieces, instead of going 
into that beautiful palace there to the right. 
I know if I jump I shall be killed, but I'll shut 
my eyes." And so he plunges headlong. Poor, 
poor creature ! Why will he be so crazy ? O 
I'll try, try harder than ever, to gain an en- 
trance into the mansions prepared for those who 
are prepared for them. 

— How queer the words " old woman" sound 
to me now ! I can not think that my hair will 
ever be gray, my face wrinkled, my eyes dim 
with age. It must be very sad to grow old. 
And yet people take it naturally enough when 
it comes, and don't seem to mind it — at least 
my grandfather didn't, I remember. 

July 22. — How can I ever tell all I have 
seen since writing last ! On Saturday morning 
father, Oliver, and I went to the Evanston de- 
pot to take the cars for the " Camp Meeting," ■ 
via Chicago. We had the pleasure of Mary's 
company, having called for her on the way. 
Arriving at Chicago, 

That cold-hearted city, 
That flourishing city, 
That large western city 

Which every one knows, 






142 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

we took the special train for the camp meet- 
ing. A more beautiful sight than that tented 
grove I have seldom seen. The scenery upon 
the Desplaines Kiver, just outside the grounds, 
reminded both Mary and me of the view in 
Perrine's Panorama of the Eiver Jordan. The 
heavy foliage of the trees that crowded to 
the river's brink; the stream, calm and shad- 
owed; the horses standing among the dark- 
green shrubbery — all was very pleasant to the 
eye. As we approached the woods in which 
the tents were arranged I tried to imagine 
that they were inhabited by the old Patri- 
archs who worshiped God in the forests thou- 
sands of years ago ; who lived in that holy 
land across the seas ; with whom God talked, 
because they hadn't Christ as we have Him ; 
and whose customs form the shadowy back- 
ground to all our modern modes of worship. 
Somehow I don't like new things so well as old 
ones. I think there is some truth in these 
lines of Coleridge : 

" Time consecrates, 
And what is gray with age becomes religion.'* 

Well, we ate our dinner in the grove, a pleas- 
ant company of us, and it was very novel and 



The Young Lady. 143 

delightful to me. That day I heard the finest 
sermon I ever listened to in my life. Bishop 
Simpson delivered it. His subject was Faith. 
It was a sermon that seemed to take us very 
near to God, and seemed to bring Christ down 
to us — one that went to my heart and brought 
the tears into my eyes. 

July 24. — About twenty years ago, in the State 
of New York, " might have been seen" a young 
mother playing with her only son, who had ar- 
rived at the interesting age of six years. She 
made with her own hands his little clothes; 
she curled his soft brown hair ; - and, gazing 
into the blue eyes of the boy, she no doubt 
thought him uncommonly innocent and charm- 
ing. Well, this small boy lived on, year after 
year ; he grew, he cried and laughed, he rock- 
ed the cradle of his youngest sister, often impa- 
tiently, and, I make no doubt, he dropped 
her on the floor when he was tired of hold- 
ing her, so that she might cry and be taken 
care of by his mother. He went to school, 
played marbles, made mud pies, studied his 
lessons with unusual diligence. When quite a 
youth he lived upon a farm ; he milked cows 
and tended sheep, he made a swing, he swung 



144 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

his sisters, he hunted, fished, and learned to 
swim. Later in life he went to college, as- 
sumed superior airs at vacation-time, smoked 
cigars, wore paper collars, carried a slim little 
cane, and quoted Byron. Subsequently he 
graduated, in a creditable manner, from col- 
lege, lived at home for a few months, grew 
serious, commenced studying for the ministry 
— Fell in Love. 

Nineteen years ago, in the State of New 
York, a bright-eyed little girl made her ap- 
pearance among the ways of men. She grew, 
she throve, she went to school, she had her lit- 
tle affections for fellow-infants. She came with 
her parents to reside in a beautiful western vil- 
lage. She developed into a refined young lady, 
religious, educated, and accomplished. She 
studied four languages beside her own, exhib- 
ited great musical talent, possessed all the do- 
mestic virtues, such as patience, mechanical 
skill, tact, and so on. 

The boy and girl whom I have thus glow- 
ingly described became acquainted a few 
months ago. Eecently they have exchanged 
hearts, and seem at present to be in a happy 
state of mind. 



The Young Lady. 145 

After all that I have said but one more re- 
mark shall be offered, viz. : My brave and no- 
ble brother can no longer be depended upon 
as an escort "o' nights," by his feminine rela- 
tives ; and of late spends such a number of 
evenings abroad as can be accounted for on 
only one hypothesis ! 

July 27. — Just now I was reading the war 
news in the evening paper, and I thought how 
the transactions of our day will be added to 
the "Kevised Editions of the United States 
History," and little children will learn about 
them when we are dead. I was frightened, 
and I put the paper down and asked myself, 
" Where shall I be then?" and resolved in 
Christ's strength to try still harder to be good. 

"What in me is dark, illume; 
What is low, raise and support." 

July 31. — Without any manner of doubt a 
clear case of warmth. Tableau : East room, 
down stairs, decidedly in disorder ; on lounge 
and sofa two disheveled young ladies gasping 
for breath ; three-double in an arm-chair an 
amiable, melted man ; these persons listening 
to a discourse on the merits of refrigerators, de- 
livered by their mother, the warm lady of the 
K 



146 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

house, clad in a green morning-dress. An oc- 
casional laugh may be heard ; short though, for 
want of strength to put life into it — in fact a 
very warm laugh. Now and then a breeze 
comes lazily through the window, but it is a 
very warm breeze. The four are perspiring — 
the four feel languid — indeed the four amount 
to very little more at this time than the same 
number of wax-candles would in a similar tem- 
perature. 

Curtain falls. 

— It seems to me that time is, to most of us, 
like an accommodation train, with eternity for 
its destination. We have opportunities of be- 
ing useful to those in the same car with us at 
least. Missionaries risk the danger of stepping 
across the platform to those out of our reach. 
Shall we sit idle and hear that child crying for 
water, or shall we take the cup from our bask- 
et and offer it to " one of these?" Shall we 
not inform that young girl, who seems innocent 
and dependent, concerning the best route for 
the place that she would reach ? Shall we not 
arrange the pillows for that poor invalid who 
is from necessity our fellow-traveler ? Oh ! 
shall we not help every one who needs us? 






The Young Lady. 147 

For soon, by some mischance, we may switch off 
on the side track of adversity, and then we shall 
wish for some friendly hand to aid us. But I 
will not fret about the future, but will try now 
to do with my might whatever is in my power. 

" Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." 

— To me there is something very significant 
in the opening and shutting of a gate, and 
also in what usually follows — the rap or ring. 
It puts the mind in a most active state ; it com- 
pels one, almost without will of her own, to 
peep slyly into the glass to see if the toilet is 
all right. And if some particular person is ex- 
pected, as a lover, a husband, or -a long-absent 
brother — one's heart, which before might have 
been brooding, like a lone bird on its nest, be- 
gins to dive and flutter most unaccountably. 
To hear the gate creak is to me like taking a 
book into my hand to read. I expect the un- 
folding of a new subject of some kind, be it 
prosy or pleasant to me. 



148 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

— Friends ! write -on the margins of the let- 
ters you send to me. I have a liking for these 
detached bits of ideas. They're like sugar in 
the bottom of my coffee cup, or the dessert aft- 
er dinner. 

— A kitten sits purring on my lap, and 
thrusting its graceful little paw over the words 
as fast as I write them. I haven't held one be- 
fore in a long time. This is Mary's, and stray- 
ed in because it was lost, and perhaps because 
it knew that I am very friendly to its kind. 
Home without a kitten isn't half home; and 
so I shall tell father by way of a suggestion. 
What a grave face the little thing has ! What 
great, wondering eyes! I wish that I could 
know what is going on in that odd black head. 

We owe a great deal to these silent creatures, 
which bear all sorts of abuse without retalia- 
tion. They set us a worthy example. There ! 
my " little neighbor" — as Charles Nordhoff 
would say — has curled up in my lap and gone 
to sleep. I wish I were as easy and graceful 
as a cat ! 

— The birds in the grove are calling to each 
other just as they used to do at Forest Home 
when I was but a little child. It seems rather 



The Young Lady. 149 

strange to me that I have been in this world so 
long that I can look back and say this appro- 
priately, just as mother does, " When I was a 
child." Many things remind me of the change, 
though somehow I think my heart is almost as 
fresh as it was so long ago. 

August 3. — I just took up my Journal to 
write, when Frank suggested that for a week 
we should exchange — a proposition to which I 
willingly agreed — and the result of which is 
that this wretched pen is now walking over 
her paper instead of mine. I wonder what 
Oliver is doing to-day up at Forest Home, 
where we lived so many years— where Frank 
and I tried to train a calf into a riding horse, 
where we had shooting matches with bows and 
arrows, where we used to go and see Louise A., 
and make play-houses with her. I wonder if 
O. is thinking how he used to " make believe" 
that he was going to hunt the sheep, when he 
was on his way to the river for the purpose of 
" taking a swim," or of the time when we found 
him lying on the barn-floor, faint and sick after 
his first cigar ? I wish that I were by his side 
in father's old room now. I'd tell him of his 
" Dulcinea;" and once started on that theme he 



150 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

would only cease to talk when the supper-bell 
rang. 

Evening. — The little thoughts that usually 
favor me at such a time as this were so much 
afraid of the strange place where I was going to 
put them that they all scampered away in a most 
heartless manner, and left me sitting here quite 
embarrassed, and feeling as much confused as 
one does at a party, when, on happening to look 
arotmd, he finds every body going away, while 
he has been so much occupied that he never 
thought that the hours had been passing, but 
vainly imagined that Time ljad been indulgent 
enough to poise on his glancing wing above the 
happy company and rest a while. 

August 8. — "Home again" (i.e. at my own 
Journal). It's pleasant to be restored to one's 
possessions. I can't say any thing " bright" in 
F.'s Journal, and I don't think she can in mine. 

— I have been reading the " Apology of Soc- 
rates," and it has moved me much. Think of 
the grand, calm man standing up before his 
base accusers with such words as these : 

"For to fear death, O Athenians! is nothing 
less than to appear to be wise without being 
so, since it is to appear to know what one does 



The Young Lady. 151* 

not know. For no one knows but that death 
is the greatest of all good to man; but men 
fear it as if they knew well that it is the great- 
est of evils. And how is not this the most 
reprehensible ignorance, to think that one 
knows what one does not know? But I, O 
Athenians ! in this perhaps differ from most 
men ; and if I should say that I am in any thing 
wiser than another, it would be this — that not 
having a competent knowledge of the things 
in Hades, I also think that I have not such 
knowledge. But to act unjustly, and to diso- 
bey my superior, whether God or man, I know 
is evil and base ; I shall never, therefore, fear or 
shun things which for aught I know may be 
good, before evils which I know to be evils. 
You, therefore — ! my judges — ought to en- 
tertain good hopes with respect to death, and 
to meditate on this one truth, that to a good 
man nothing is evil, neither while living nor 
when dead — nor are his concerns neglected by 
the Gods !" 

Then listen to his closing words ! What a 
subject for a painter ! Socrates standing before 
the tribunal, his loose robes sweeping in folds 
to the ground, his arms folded, and a calm, ma- 



152 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

jestic look upon his face, as he says to his ac- 
cusers : 

" But it is now time to depart — for me to die, 
for you to live ; but which of us is going to a 
better state is unknown to every one but God." 

Saturday morning, August 10. — Frank has 
just gone to take poor sick E. out riding. Old 
"Yankee" — E.'s favorite horse — started off 
slowly, as if conscious that the mistress who 
used to gallop so gleefully through the groves 
upon his back required a gentler motion now. 
I pity E. She has been ill so long, and she 
knows that those delightful sensations of health 
and vigor which she once enjoyed will never be 
hers again. She knows that in a few weeks 
she will be laid under the sod at Eose Hill, while 
all goes on among us as it did before. Oh ! 
the thought makes me shudder. For my own 
strength and freedom from pain I can not thank 
Thee enough, God ! 

— Mollie L. called this morning. I shall not 
forget in a long, long time the beautiful conver- 
sation I had with her about things good and 
holy ; worthy always to be talked of, instead 
of the narrow, meagre ideas of worldly life. 

— At a cost of great trembling and heart-beat- 



The Young Lady. 153 

ing I spoke this morning in " General Class ;" 
but I was plenteously rewarded by the con- 
sciousness that I had done my duty ; that those 
whom I've advised to live a sacrificing life, and 
who would naturally notice my actions then, 
will not think of me with reproach, nor as one 
who before men denied the Saviour, whom in 
private she had professed to love. One who 
would do this is unworthy to live, I think. 
Ella, my brave Sabbath-school girl, was the 
first to speak. She did it so cheerfully, as if 
she counted all the unpleasantness of so public 
an act as nothing for Christ's sake. Oh ! it is 
very beautiful to think that we are all in the 
same path that leads up to the Heavenly City. 
Who can be content to stay behind? Who 
refuse to journey with God's people up to His 
throne ? 

— Lying on the lounge and looking at the 
pretty quilt on our bed, I thought of all the 
diamonds and circles that were wrought into it 
by the delicate fingers of a girl of nineteen 
years. And I, the grown-up daughter of that 
girl, who is now going down the century, and 
who has several threads of silver in her hair, 
look at the quilt and acknowledge within my- 



154 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

self that I'm not half so industrious as my 
mother used to be; and upon thinking the 
matter carefully over, conclude that on the 
whole none of the girls of eighteen hundred 
and sixty-one are as industrious as their mo- 
thers were before them. And more than that, 
they're not so sensible and thoughtful as the 
girls of " eighteen hundred and ever so few" 
(as the Autocrat expresses it) ; for, though we 
have more advantages in every way, yet very 
often they go unimproved, and fashion, frivol- 
ity, and foolishness are, in a sad number of in- 
stances, our characteristics. 

And the quilt reminds me of something else. 
In it there is a piece of one of Aunt Char- 
lotte's dresses. Aunt Charlotte was mother's 
youngest sister, and died at the age of twelve. 
I have often seen the little high-heeled shoes and 
the childish toys so carefully preserved as me- 
mentos of her by her friends ; and I've tried to 
imagine her talking, laughing, and playing as I 
used to do ; but it don't seem very real to me. 
For more than thirty years the little feet that 
wore those shoes have been still in the grave. 
For more than thirty years has her soul been in 
the country where they never grow old. But it 



The Young Lady. 155 

seems to me that when Aunt W. went to heav- 
en two or three years ago, and Hiet her sister 
Charlotte, she saw a little girl of twelve years ; 
for souls don't grow up to be big ones there, 
though vigor and progress belong to each one 
of them. 

Down stairs, just now, mother and I were talk- 
ing, and she said that often things that she knew 
the future would bring seemed so unreal that she 
was as much startled when they came as if she 
had had no premonitions of them ; for instance, 
when Aunt W. was sick, several years ago, she 
told mother that she wanted her large Bible, in 
which she had marked her favorite passages, to 
be given to father when she died. Though every 
thing was tending toward that result, mother 
said, as her sister sat in her chair propped up 
with pillows, and looking so cheerful and quiet, 
she couldn't think that it would really be. 
But the wheels of Time went round and round 
— the worst did happen : Aunt W. died. Fa- 
ther reads from that same Bible to us at family 
worship every day, and in it we try to trace 
out the path by which she reached the change- 
less land. The fingers which held the pretty 
fan that was Aunt W.'s, but belongs to mother 



156 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

now — oh I where are they ? Lying quietly on 
her breast under the ground. Last Sabbath, 
when I held it as we sat in church, I thought how 
strange is life ! How inexorable are its laws ! 
Oh this " change in the twinkling of an eye," 
from all we loved and knew as pleasant and 
familiar — how terrible it is ! Surely none but 
God can sustain us in that last extremity ! 

— This evening we were talking of Mr. M., 
the brave young missionary. The struggle 
that it cost him to go to India may have 
been as severe as one would have in dying 
— if one were prepared — the suffering was 
far worse perhaps. Ah ! we who live these 
sheltered lives, with only " everyday" tempta- 
tions, who have so little required of us, can 
not but feel that those who live nobler lives, 
whose every act is for God, who in some sense 
lose their lives for Him, will have higher places 
than we, by-and-by. And if our little enemies, 
which for comparison's sake may be called imps, 
so often overcome us, what should we do with 
the great big devil with whom so many have 
to wrestle, and over whom they triumph, and 
place their feet royally upon his neck as he lies 
vanquished before them ? 



The Young Lady. 157 

— I think it is Lavater who says: "God 
fixes all of a man's features for him except 
his mouth : this he can change." In many- 
instances I have noticed this statement as 
true. 

There is Mr. , with his mouth drawn up 

like the opening of an old-fashioned work-bag. 
I don't think God meant it to look so disagree- 
able. I don't think this man's disposition is very 
good ; I can't help the opinion, and I hope it's 
not uncharitable. His religion doesn't seem 
cheerful to me, his voice sounds so woeful when 

he mentions it. Mrs. 's mouth (not to be 

disrespectful but honest) looks like that of a 
fish to me — undetermined and heavy; Miss 
A.'s affects you like the sight of a ripe peach 
or apricot; and Mrs. B.'s is small, and full of 
drollery in its expression. I think that a per- 
son who will take the pains to hold his mouth 
by mere strength of will, so that it shall not 
look cross, until it gets amiable habits, is an 
obliging one, and deserves well of his country- 
men. 

Evening. — I didn't know whether to read 
"Prue and I," the Evening Journal, or to sew 
on my girdle ; so I've done neither, but am sit- 



158 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

ting here with, a fresh pen, full of ink. Since 
I've no one to talk with but myself, and it 
would seem odd to attempt a conversation 
with her, I'll put down some " stray reflec- 
tions." F. says she observes character very 
much of late. I'm going to cultivate this trait 
in myself. My idea of the elements of charac- 
ter, which we should try to develop, is this: 
The basis, the entire back-ground, should be 
love to God and obedience toward Him. The 
figures that are to act before this are charity, 
gentleness, truth, generosity, and energy — all 
combined with a firm purpose to be intelligent 
and to do good. In my idea Eeligion is the 
engine, and the other elements are the cars at- 
tached to it. A character that most beautiful- 
ly illustrates unselfishness is that of Dora, our 
old school -friend. This quality has had a 
splendid growth in her nature. She is al- 
ways speaking kind, encouraging words to her 
friends ; she manifests great enthusiasm in all 
that concerns their welfare ; she seems 'to de- 
rive her purest pleasure from the noble quali- 
ties displayed by them, and withal requires so 
little attention to herself that one would almost 
think she " counted herself out," and only found 






The Young Lady. 159 

her happiness in that of others. She has so 
much childlike innocence and artlessness that 
it is very refreshing to hear her talk. She al- 
ways speaks of others, always gathers flowers 
to decorate your hair, never thinking of her 
own. 

— It seems to me that Eternity is like an an- 
them to which Time furnishes the prelude: the 
universe is the organ ; men are the black keys, 
women the white ones ! 

Man in this world stands between two mys- 
teries. Whence canfe he ? Whither goeth he ? 
The first is not a vital question ; the second is 
answered as soon as his decision is made con- 
cerning the manner in which he will act. Life 
bridges the distance between the Whither and 
the Whence. God made us. Christ loves us 
and leads us if we will, and at last hands us 
back to God again. Each one must go around 
the divine circle ; only it is left for him to de- 
cide where God shall put him at last. 

* ' Life's mystery, deep, restless as the ocean, 

Hath surged and wailed for ages to and fro ; 
Earth's generations watch its ceaseless motion, 

As in and out its hollow moanings flow. 
Shivering and yearning by that unknown sea, 
Let my soul calm itself, God ! in Thee." 



160 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

— It seems to me that God is like an elec- 
trical battery. Christ stands next to Him and 
first receives the shock; then come the Angels; 
and Humanity completes the chain. So the 
spark of divinity thrills all along the line, 
strengthening each spirit that receives it, and 
lifting it up nearer to the Source of power and 
love. 

— In Festus, Lucifer is made to say : 

"The mind hath features as the body hath." 

This line reminds me of those of plain exterior, 
who so often possess characters whose features 
must have perfect symmetry, which, if the out- 
side had been beautiful, flattery and vanity 
might have marred. Many plain people are 
like chairs and couches of velvet, covered with 
brown holland to preserve, not to attract. 

— I've finished reading " Prue and I." It 
is a pleasant book ; and I thank you, Mr. Cur- 
tis, for having written it. The main idea is 
that we can live in fancy if we please. That 
imagination takes us on the longest journeys 
with unequaled rapidity, and without fatigue. 
By means of it we may cross the ocean with- 
out danger of being sea-sick, may visit Europe 



The Young Lady. 161 

and the countries of the Orient, or may live in 
the tropics. We may see the great and gpod 
of all lands, though a moment ago we were in 
solitude. Possessions may be ours though we 
thought ourselves in poverty, for we may all 
have "Chateaux en Espagne." Oh, I'm glad I 
have some imagination ! But I wish that it 
were more vivid and more cultivated; for I 
need the balmy, spicy breeze from some rare, 
strange country on my brow ; for my cheeks 
flush and my tongue is parched sometimes with 
the fever of loneliness and seclusion. So I'm 
going to try this fancy traveling to keep my 
spirits up ; for sometimes of late the tears 
come to my eyes I hardly can tell why. But 
this complaint is most ungrateful : for blessings 
are showered upon me all the time ; though 
this touch of the minor key will steal into the 
song of my life now and then. As it says in 
the book I've been reading, we want to get 
Home more than any thing else. There are 
many who have no place they can call home; 
yet I have one down here in this world. But 
it is the eternal one, after all, that will satisfy 
all our hungerings, and give us what we are 
striving for, often in such odd ways. 
L 



162 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

" Oh ! for the peace which fioweth as a river, 
Making Life's desert-places bloom and smile. 
Oh ! for a faith to grasp heaven's bright ' forever,' 
Amid the shadows of earth's * little while.' " 

— I'm taking drawing lessons now. Not 
dull houses, rocks, and rail-fences, but human 
faces are my patterns. I have a passion for 
this, though not much skill. Animals too I 
delight to sketch. I'm anticipating great pleas- 
ure from this occupation. When I understand it 
better, I'll love the fair face as it gradually comes 
into view. How sweet and solemn it shall be ! 
Already a beautiful head is up before my im- 
agination ! Oh, those old masters ! No won- 
der that we almost worship them, copying de- 
voutly as they did from God's patterns, it seems 
to make them almost divine. 

— How strange is the Hereafter to us all ! 
How our hearts cry out when God leaves us 
in darkness as to where our friends go when 
they die ; just as a child does when its mother 
leaves it alone. Faith leads us a little way. 
It tells us that the good are safe ; but where, oh 
where ? This is what we long to know ; but it 
is one of the mysteries about which we must 
be patient, I suppose. 



The Young Lady. 163 

" Closer, closer my steps 

Come to the dark abysm ; 
Closer, death to my lips 
Presses the awful chrism I 

" Saviour ! perfect my trust ; 
Strengthen my feeble faith ; 
Let me feel as I would when I stand 
On the shore of the river of death — 

"Feel as I would when my feet 
Are slipping over the brink ; 
For it may be I'm nearer home — 
Nearer now — than I think !" 

September. — I have been reading Lewes's "Life 
of Goethe." He is a marvelous character. He 
is always falling in love with some girl ; it don't 
seem to make very much difference whom, for 
he often leaves one whom we should think 
he worshiped foj another in no respect more 
charming. However, he fell into these senti- 
mental states very naturally, I think, and out 
of them in the same manner. We should not 
judge him harshly, since his constitution was 
so peculiar. He was royally generous some- 
times, though we can not call him admirable in 
all respects. It is pleasant to read of genuises 
and of their friends. We recognize in them the 
same longings that we have felt in our own 
souls, and this brings us nearer to them. 



164: Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

— Walking along the lake shore this even- 
ing, Frank and I repeated those beautiful lines 
by Prentice, " The Name in the Sand," and I 
know that we deeply felt their sweet and sol- 
emn meaning. I will write them here, as a 
memento of our evening stroll : 

"Alone I walked the ocean strand, 
A pearly shell was in my hand, 
I stooped and. wrote upon the sand 
My name, the year, the day ; 
As onward from the spot I passed, 
One lingering look behind I cast, 
A wave came rolling high and fast, 
And washed my lines away. 

"And so, methought, 'twill quickly be 
With every mark on earth of me ! 
A wave of dark oblivion's sea 

Will sweep across the place 
Where I have trod the sandy shore 
Of time, and be to me no more ; 
Of me, my day, the name I bore, 

To leave no track or trace. 

"And yet, with Him who counts the sands, 
And holds the water in His hands, 
I know a lasting record stands 

Inscribed against my name, 
Of all this busy hand hath wrought, 
Of all this thinking soul hath thought, 
And from these fleeting moments caught, 

Fcr glory or for shame." 



The Young Lady. 165 

Sunday, September 29. — Poor Rowena, who 
had been sick so long, who had suffered so much, 
died at one o'clock two mornings ago, with her 
head on her father's breast. I feel lonely and 
unhappy. I have little spirit to write, for I'm 
thinking about Eowena, and how all that is left 
of her is lying pale and cold at her home, where 
only a little while ago I talked with her and 
she answered me. The other members of the 
family have gone to attend her funeral, and I 
am here alone. I am ashamed to write it, but 
the truth is, I was afraid to go. It is an un- 
fortunate trait of mine that I have a great 
fear of all that appertains to death, especially 
a funeral. I have not attended one since I 
was a little girl, and I never look at a corpse. 
I account for this peculiarity partly from the 
fact, that, when I was about ten years old, I 
saw a dead man, in a linen shroud, " laid out" 
in the terrific, heathenish way that was com- 
mon then for preparing people for burial. His 
face was, oh ! so ghastly, and his eyes were not 
quite closed. Every thing about him seemed 
calculated to excite terror. How well I re- 
member the wretched feeling I had when night 
came ! I could not sleep ; though I counted, 



166 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

and imagined sheep jumping over a fence 
(some old lady having told me that was a sure 
way of " getting into a drowse"). At last I was 
so nervous that I could not endure it, and not 
liking to disturb Frank, who was asleep, I got 
up and went to father's room, where he was 
sitting at his desk, writing. I remember how 
bright and cozy every thing seemed to me 
there. He took me on his knee and told me a 
story, then hummed some nursery tune to me 
until I fell asleep, and then laid me down be- 
side my sleeping sister. 

Among all my friends who have died there 
is not one whom I have gone to see for the "last 
time," but always I have staid at home and 
heard the mournful sound of the tolling bell, 
and thought that bad enough. So now, when 
Eowena, whom I knew so well and liked so 
much, is going to be buried, I have staid away. 
I wish that my nature were not so peculiar in 
this. It is indeed a trial ; for I must either suf- 
fer great pain from this sensitiveness, or else I 
must overcome it, which I fear would be im- 
possible. I can not see any philosophy in such 
a state of mind as mine ; for why should I be 
afraid of a human body when the soul has left 



The Young Lady. 167 

it, any more than I am of the body of an ani- 
mal? I can only state the fact, without at- 
tempting to account for it : — so here I am alone. 
After studying my Bible-lesson I read one of 
Dr. Bushnell's sermons. The subject was Pa- 
tience. He showed how silent endurance of 
pain and insult, without manifesting any feel- 
ing of anger or desire for vengeance, are often 
more powerful in their effects than the most 
active arguments and exhortations in favor of 
religion ; that many who will brace themselves 
against the latter will be conquered by the in- 
fluence of the former. 

October— "The Euby Month." 

The mellow, dreamy autumn days have come. 
I revel in their luxuriance. The flame-colored 
woods, the dropping nuts and acorns, the ground 
covered with fallen leaves, and the pleasant 
smell of the earth delight me, and I'm never 
so much in my element as when in the groves. 
I'm tempted to think that autumn is finer than 
spring ; pert, merry spring though she be, my 
nature has more in common now with the lan- 
guor of the dying year. The season reminds 
me of our Forest Home, of the quiet and 'lorn- 
ness that it had in the fall. In fancy I see the 



168 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

dead leaves strewing the front piazza and steps, 
blown from the great vine that threw its lov- 
ing arms about the house, and drooped so shel- 
teringly around the corner by the parlor door. 
I imagine the trees in the pasture with their 
brilliant leaves, and pick up those fresh, sweet 
smelling hickory and hazel-nuts on the great 
hill south of the house. I suppose it is pleas- 
anter to imagine than it would be to behold ; 
for they say the vine is blown down, and many 
of the trees, those trees that towered up so 
grandly, are dead. Nature looks at us seri- 
ously, calmly, like a strong soul saying good- 
by to life. The fruit is being gathered ; choice 
plants are being taken out of the ground and 
carried to the green-house ; we hear the notes 
of the wild geese, and, looking up, see the long, 
triangular-shaped company with the apex to- 
ward the south, and as the peculiar, indescriba- 
ble sound is heard, and I gaze upon the flying 
columns, my heart aches and I wish that I were 
as free as those birds ; but I remember that 
by-and-by I shall be infinitely more free than 
they. Up in the sky the shroud will soon be 
woven that is to cover the earth. Death is 
whispered of in every leaf, but we're not afraid 



The Young Lady. 169 

as when a human creature dies. Mrs. Stowe 
touches the difference in these words: "The 
human soul with its awful shadow makes all 
things sacred ;" and, we may add, the house 
in which we lived, although deserted, wakens 
awe in our hearts because its former occupant 
was ever a mystery to us. But in nature death 
is not repulsive, it takes the form of rich ma- 
turity. The acorns fall upon the roof and rat- 
tle down its side wearily, as if glad to be so 
near their rest, and they lie quietly on the 
ground waiting for a new life, as the dead 
among mortals lie before the resurrection. 

— Here followeth a statement of one of my 
likes, with illustrations to match: I like to 
hear one woman praise and compliment an- 
other woman unreservedly, if she deserves it, 
and I like her to be in her heart glad on ac- 
count of the virtues and attractions of that 
other. I admire a character strong and gener- 
ous enough to be delighted by the happiness 
of two persons who love each other, though he 
or she may be at that time almost unloved. I 
believe this is the grace of character which we 
all most need to cultivate if we would be like 
Christ ; for it seems to involve all other graces. 



170 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

I honor Will S. for manifesting so much pride 
and interest in the success of his friend H.'s 
graduating oration, and seeming to think but 
little about how his own was received. I look 
with awe upon the unselfishness of mothers 
toward their children. Such self-forgetfulness 
as theirs is not of this world, but comes down 
from God out of heaven. The opposite side of 
this quality is equally beautiful, I think ; i. e n 
sorrowing for those who are in trouble as well 
as rejoicing in other's joy. Waiting for others 
to " catch up," or, rather, turning to assist them 
forward, reaching down from the summit which 
you occupy a loving, helpful hand to those less 
strong. I shall never forget how my generous 
school-mate Effie found the answers to the " re- 
view questions" in grammar, and carefully put 
little papers in the book to mark them for me 
when I was a little girl, and a stupid one too, 
I blush to add. One remembers these little 
unselfish actions so very long. We can not 
help noticing them, since the motive which 
prompts to their performance is so widely at 
variance with our unregenerate nature, and 
since the action we think purest and most beau- 
tiful in ourselves, oftentimes, if we will closely 






The Young Lady. 171 

examine its motive, proves to be like a flower 
in the sand, planted with no root, in the weary- 
desert of self, and nnperfumed by the odor that 
comes from the skies : 

11 Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours ; 
To ask them what report they bore to heaven, 
And how they might have borne more welcome news." 

— I like Dickens, and should love him, I 
guess, if he hadn't parted from his wife! It 
was bright of him to write " Bleak House." 
His fame, I think — and so does every body, I 
suppose — rests chiefly upon his clear perception 
and exposition of character. Many of his char- 
acters are so naturally pictured that you feel per- 
sonally acquainted with them after reading a few 
pages. There is a current of quiet humor under 
every thing he says that makes you feel very 
pleasant but not excited. It gives no pain nor 
feeling of disappointment to lay the book aside, 
and it is always a pleasure to take it up again. 

— To-day I made a sketch of a. horse which 
much resembled that of Tarn O'Shanter when 
running for dear life away from the witches. 

— If the Country Parson is the standard, I am 
an illustration of " veal ;" if Timothy Titcomb 
speaks truth, I am " green;" if I know myself, I 



172 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

am not decidedly either. (The train of thought 
which suggested the above remark is best 
known to myself. Suffice it, that an or- 
gan situated within the pericardium was the 
engine.) — I'll tell you what I like. A charita- 
ble person — one who takes broad views of 
things — so that no matter to what church he 
may belong he looks kindly, even lovingly, 
upon all other churches, regarding them as dif- 
ferent vessels all bound for the same port — each 
going toward the same glorious objects, Christ 
and heaven. One who looks unj udgingly upon 
the sins of others, remembering his own, and 
knowing that God alone can see the heart ; who 
will freely acknowledge that he is in the wrong, 
if he feels it to be true ; who is proud to 
beg any one's pardon whom he has wronged 
(strange as it may seem, I have heard persons 
boast that never in their lives had they used 
those just and generous words : "I beg your 
pardon !") ; who is never overcome by anger ; 
who can speak calmly while others are raging 
with uncontrolled passion; who is "wine in- 
stead of soda-water" (to borrow a neat compari- 
son) ; who almost always does right, but who 
never talks about his wonderful deeds and self- 



The Young Lady. * 173 

denials ; who teaches by example more than 
by precept; who lives out his belief; who is 
kind to children, and appreciates the needs of 
young people. "Whoever you are, if you an- 
swer to this description, let me fall on my 
knees before you and kiss your hand — which 
is more than I'd do to Queen Victoria, though 
I might thereby be excluded from the hope of 
ever being presented at the Court of St. James! 
— I've been reading the Bible — the Old Test- 
ament. I like it very much ; but of course I 
read it rarely compared with Christ 1 s words, as 
recorded in the New. I wonder as I read 
about the " daughters" what kind of girls they 
were in those old, old times, and can hardly 
imagine them as real flesh, blood, and bone, as 
girls are nowadays. Was Keuel's daughter 
Zipporah very much in love with Moses, I 
wonder ; and did he say sweet things to her as 
Moseses do now ? It seems very queer to me. 
If a " Miss" of those days could have been 
preserved until now, young and natural-look- 
ing, if she could be introduced to a Miss of 
our day, Georgia B. for instance, I wonder 
what they would have to say to each other ? 
Wouldn't the contrast be amazing? Would 



174 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

those ancient girls have any thing in common 
with us, I wonder? But think of it! there is 
a time coming when, relatively, we shall be as 
old as they ! 

— Twilight — Have been out riding with Ellie 
S., kind, reliable girl! Had a pleasant time, 
and we talked of R I saw the carriage in 
which she used to ride, with the horse she 
drove, standing before her father's pleasant 
residence, and was painfully reminded that it 
was forever emptied of its accustomed burden. 
I think of her to-night, with the rain falling 
upon her grave. Alas that rain must sometime 
fall on all our graves ! 

— I wish that I knew who wrote "Even Me." 
Here are two verses from it, that go right to 
my heart : 

"Pass me not, O tender Saviour! 
Let me love and cling to Thee • 
I am longing for thy favor ; 
When thou comest, call for me, 
Even me. 

"Love of God ! so pure and changeless ; 
Blood of God ! so rich and free ; 
Grace of God ! so strong and boundless ; 
Magnify it all in me, 

Even me." 



The Young Lady. 175 

October 29. — Just returned from a Lecture 
by Dr. Haven, author of the Mental Philoso- 
phy, which was our text-book in school. I 
was interested in what he had to say. It was 
like a panorama passing before us, the scene 
that he presented was so vivid and so distinct. 
I was charmed when he led us into the ideal 
world — into u Cloud Land," as he called it. He 
showed the manner in which it is connected 
with poetry and art — cheered us by saying that 
we were by nature poets ourselves — urged us 
to live more and enjoy more by the contempla- 
tion of the Ideal. His mind seemed to be so 
full of originality that in all he said it seemed 
most natural that he should say it ; so that, in- 
stead of being surprised at his unique compari- 
sons and beautiful flights of thought, we took 
them as matters of course, and expected the 
next passage to contain others equally good 
if not better. At the close of the lecture an 
old man in the back part of the house, who is 
a Quaker, said, in a loud voice : " Let us pray 1" 
much to the astonishment of all present, espe- 
cially the lecturer. Although the time was in- 
opportune, and although it seemed rather out 
of taste that the spirit should move him at that 



176 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

particular juncture, I was impressed by the tre- 
mor and solemnity of his voice and his words 
that seemed almost inspired. I have seldom 
listened to a prayer that seemed to come from 
a heart more truly in unison with the mighty 
heart of God. 

November 3. — Oliver, dear kind boy, has just 
gone away. His parting kiss is still fresh upon 
mother's lips and Frank's and mine. I looked 
sadly after him as he walked away through the 
grove, for he will never come to live at home 
again. His studies are over, and he is a min- 
ister now. God be very merciful to him — im- 
press him with the sacredness of his office! 
May he ever be as pure-hearted and as good as 
now he seems to us ; may he ever walk in the 
illuminated path made by the pitying, patient 
Master, Christ! 

— Night is coming. The kind old nurse 
whose head is gray with moonlight, and who 
so tenderly puts the tired world to sleep. 

November 6. — I've finished reading "Dombey 
and Son." Cold, queenly Edith is a picture 
that I have placed in my spiritual gallery, 
where the gray twilight can fall upon it; while 
Florence and Paul are where a sunset glow 



The Young Lady. 177 

can richen and deepen their angelic counte- 
nances. 

November 9. — The same quiet life goes on 
and on, with no particular excitement to star- 
tle, and but little loneliness to sadden ; a con- 
tented, medium state of things. German les- 
sons to be learned and recited — books to be 
read — work to be done — horses to be ridden. 
Thus these autumn days glide away into the 
ocean of all that is past, and before I am aware 
days that were future are rolling over my head 
like billows. This serious time finds a little of 
the same earnestness, I think, in me. I try to 
improve the now as well, almost always, as I 
can. The coming time stands just beyond, 
like a veiled nun, a mysterious secret to me. 
Unlike most girls of my age I have no plan of 
life, only a plan for each day as it comes. 

Evening. — Just home from an evening walk, 
during a part of which business called me 
into several door-yards, where I couldn't very 
well avoid making observations. As I passed 

Mr. 's yard I saw through the window 

several persons sitting around a table, they 
seemed to be reading together. I recognized 

Master , a good lad, with a broad, con- 

M 



178 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

fidential countenance, and his sister, who is 
like unto him. The scene was quite a pleas- 
ant one. Cowper would have written a poem 
about it, but that is hardly in my line. There 
sat the family as contented and happy in each 
other as a king's might be — far happier than 
that of our honest, anxious President, Abra- 
ham Lincoln. They live pleasantly together, 
strong in their mutual love and confidence. 
What would you more ? 

I peeped into Mrs. B.'s sitting-room window 
as I passed, and she vouchsafed me a gracious 
nod. She sat by herself sewing. Her hus- 
band, " the Doctor," was in the library ; very 
natural it was that a scholar, such as he is, 
should be there. But I wondered if, when his 
wife was a beautiful, loving girl, and when he 
looked down into her face so tenderly with his 
manly brown eyes, they used to think that life 
would ever be practical with them ? No, it didn't 
come to their minds. Yet now she sat alone 
with her work while Johnnie lay in the cra- 
dle near her, with her two little girls sleeping 
in the next rqom, her son Henry up stairs 
studying his lessons for to-morrow. Her eld- 
est daughter, Mary, is a young lady with an 



The Young Lady. 179 

eager, hopeful heart, as her mother's was once, 
and a loving heart too — perhaps that is the best 
of all ! But how romance melts into reality, 
like the rosy sunset clouds into rain! 

— IVe been reading Aurora Leigh. The 
divine of Mrs. Browning's nature shines out in 
every line. 

— When will a change come to my life? 
Sometime it must. Yet I shuddered this aft- 
ernoon when I thought I should be twenty 
sometime. That I who have had no care nor 
trouble, must bear the one great burden, death, 
with no human hand to help me. I, as well 
as the holiest being that has lived ; I, as well 
as the wisest who have thought, the most pa- 
tient who have suffered. How awful ! But — 

Tuesday morning. — What a happy, tread-mill 
life is mine ! I know nothing about the excit- 
ing, whirling scenes in the " great world," nor 
do I covet such knowledge. Evanston seems 
like a book that I am to read through and 
through — a kind of story with a very long 
moral — and though it is interesting, yet one 
can not help being tired sometimes ; for 
though a thing be very good, yet it is pos- 
sible to get too much of the same article, I 



180 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

suppose, as far as sublunary matters are con- 
cerned ! 

December 20. — Something new to tell! Aunt 
S. has come, and we're quite vivified by her 
presence. She brought some pictures, taken 
at an early stage in the history of her Western 
nieces. In F.'s " counterfeit presentment" the 
expression is what that of Atlas might have 
been if he had hired somebody to hold up 
the world just for a minute or two while he 
ran in and "sat for a daguerreotype." Such 
care, such weariness, such lowliness of spirit as 
are depicted in her countenance I have not seen 
in many a day, and I am happy to say I look 
in vain to find in her face at the date of this 
writing. Did you ever see yourself in the oval 
part, outside of a spoon, or in a new tin pan ? 
If so, you may know that the contour of your 
face as therein rendered was not unlike that of 
mine at the age of seven ! 

December 31, 1861. — The last day of the 
year! Without much reflection, and with 
but few twinges of pain, I have seen this day 
pass by. For the last twelve months I have 
had reason for nothing but thankfulness. No 
troubles worth mentioning have mingled with 



The Young Lady. 181 

the brimming cup of happiness which has been 
pressed to my willing lips. All this kindness 
has my Father showed to one who has done 
many wicked, thoughtless deeds in eighteen 
hundred and sixty-one, for all of which she is 
heartily sorry this night. To-morrow begins 
the beautiful new year, in which no child of 
Eve has ever sinned. But 

" The slime from the muddy banks of Time" 

will soon be upon its spotless robes. I do not 
feel like making any resolutions for this new 
year. I can pray to be kept in the right path 
one day at a time. 

[Remark. — It is a significant fact that in the 
above instance Mary departed from a time- 
honored custom of hers in making no resolu- 
tions on the last day of the year. The forego- 
ing passage, with several others, written during 
the last year of her life, comes with the force 
of a prophecy to our hearts, now that we see 
" the end from the beginning."] 

January 5, 1862. — I have been impatient 
once already this morning; and I am sorry, for 
I hoped to be good through the whole day. God 
forgive me, and help me for the rest of the time. 

— Father and mother were talking last night 



182 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

about our little sister who died many years be- 
fore I was born, and I was "led to think" (as Mr. 
F. says in class-meeting) what kind of a young 
lady she would be now if she had lived ; no 
longer my little sister but the grown-up, eldest 
girl. Let me see, I think she would have been 
very beautiful and talented (it is not undue 
" family pride" to say this, since she is dead) ; 
for she was the first already, though she died 
before she was two years old, and she showed 
as many symptoms of the latter gift as a baby 
could. When they took her out to ride, mo- 
ther says she would scream and clap her 
hands with delight ; while ordinary babies, she 
added (and I felt bound to suppose that I had 
belonged to that class, since I still lived !), nev- 
er did any thing of the kind, but were stupid 
and sleepy little animals on most occasions. 
Well, my sister Carrie would have been tall 
and graceful, no doubt, with a sweet face and 
winning ways ; with pretty hands like mother's, 
and a small foot such as father has. I'm sure 
there would have been a wedding in the house 
before this time if she had lived ; for some no- 
ble man would without doubt have loved our 
beautiful eldest born. I think she would have 



The Young Lady. 183 

been proud of her brother Oliver, confidential 
toward her sister Frank, and probably she 
would have liked and advised me, though I 
should never have felt it my duty to obey her, 
I am sure. I think she would not have ex- 
pected me to do so. Carrie ! How strange the 
name sounds to me, and unfamiliar, for we al- 
ways speak of her as "the little girl that died." 
It is very pleasant to think that she carried her 
name unsullied to the skies, as none of mo- 
ther's " grown-up children" ever may. There 
is another of our band who died unnamed — two 
sisters in heaven, two on earth. Oh may we 
meet among the angels on the other shore our 
long-lost, stranger sisters ! May the same kind 
hand that guided them safely over the river, 
with their untried baby feet, guide us as safely ; 
for beside that dark and unknown stream we 
shall find ourselves no stronger than they. 

— Frank and I went out for a sleigh-ride to- 
day, driving Jack ourselves. Dear old horse ! 
there is a peculiar feeling in my heart toward 
you. " I think of you almost as of a human be- 
ing ; you have been a faithful helper of ours 
so long, ever since I can remember. What a 
dashing young steed you were years ago, with 



184 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

your shiny coat and fiery Morgan blood ! But 
that is past, and you are decidedly on the 
down-hill side of life now. If you were sick I 
would feel it a pleasure to hold your head on 
my lap, and to look into your great, sorrowful 
eyes. If horses have a heaven, I am sure you 
will be the chief angel in it ; and I can not 
help hoping that the mysterious God who made 
us both will send both into happiness, and 
that I may see your faithful old face again, 
when the veil of flesh is lifted and spirit com- 
prehends spirit. Perhaps then I may learn 
the secret of your silent, uncomprehended life 
on earth. I like to think that all your work 
and weariness have not been in vain, but that 
you are to enter upon a life where you will 
have no heavy burdens to bear — where there 
will be no chafing bit nor stinging blow, no 
hungriness nor thirst. Poor Jack ! your young 
mistress believes there is good in store for you 
beyond the ways of horses and of men ! 

— While arranging some old books to-day I 
came across a Mitchell's Geography that I used 
to study in Mrs. H.'s school. I would not have 
believed then that now I should think of those 
days with such a tender feeling toward their 



The Young Lady. 185 

memory, and with so much regret that I shall 
never be a child again — never, never! It 
seems strange to me that with such a hollow 
on my head where the "bump" of reverence 
should have been, I find I have so much of 
that sentiment for mother and all pertaining 
to her. On a little fancy-basket, given to me 
by a playmate ever so many years ago, was 
tied a narrow ribbon, over a place where one 
or two straws were broken. My aunt, in her 
neat way, untied it this morning, saying, "Oh, 
I'd have that off, it is so faded now;" and she 
threw it upon the floor. When she did not see 
me, I slily picked up the despised piece of ribbon 
and put it in my pocket. I remembered that 
mother tied it on the basket when I was her 
little girl, so I hadn't a heart to throw it away. 

— My brave cousins M. and H. are educa- 
ting their younger sisters. As I think of their 
patience and heroism my heart says : " My 
cousins! I respect you more than words can 
tell for your self-devotion, though the cares 
you have assumed have led you to maturity 
so young, so pitifully young I" 

— Of late I hunger and thirst after the beau- 
tiful, as displayed in nature and in art. I wish 



186 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

so much, to see for myself what I read about so 
often in books. I am becoming lawless in my 
eagerness to travel. Though the prospect is 
at present meagre for attaining my object, yet 
I am bold to say that Europe is in my life-pro- 
gramme. Please, God, let me see it ! 

— Sometimes I can almost understand how it 
is that ignorant people, whose lives have been 
full of hardships, think that they shall not be 
denied entrance when they knock at the gate 
of the city of God ; for they think of their bare 
and bleeding feet, so tender when they started 
on the path of life, and hope that because they 
have suffered so much He will receive them. 
But we know, however natural this might seem 
to an unenlightened mind, "it is Christ who 
hath died" for our salvation, and in Him alone 
can we with safety trust. 

"Let me be one 
Of all the sinless company 
That round thy throne hosannas sing, 
Through Christ thy Son !" 

— I have been reading the second installment 
of Miss Harding's " Story of To-day." It seem- 
ed as though each sentence of her strong and 
passionate writing were a wrench drawing up 



The Young Lady. 187 

the lax strings of my being into harmony with 
those of the wretched people whose miseries she 
describes. "The cry of the human" is very 
distinct in this woman's voice ; and it will be 
heard and heeded, I am sure. She makes me 
feel more like helping those who need help 
than ever before. 

— The weather is mild already. The sun- 
beams are no longer cold white lines of light, 
but are growing warm and mellow. The 
things of nature seem whispering among them- 
selves that it is time to prepare for the new 
spring that is coming up from the south. And 
those delicious pictures, painted in green and 
blue, that in a few more weeks will be shown 
to us, are already seen in my eager fancy's eye. 

— To-day we have had glorious news from 
the army. Fort Donelson has been taken by 
our forces under General Grant ! The thrill 
that has pierced the heart of the whole North 
at such cheering intelligence reached my quiet 
home, and my rather stupid self, and three 
distinct chills have gone over me as, joining 
with Frank, I have given three uproarious hur- 
rahs (!!!) for our Western troops and the lau- 
rels thev have won ! 



188 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

February. — Last night there was a fire in 
our quiet, " Thorpish" town. How strange I 
felt when I was wakened by the quick, sharp 
ding, ding, ding of the College bell ! An aw- % 
ful shudder went over me. "We sprang up 
and went to the window, where we saw a sight 
that seemed to me not unlike that which the 
Day of Judgment will present. The heavens 
glowed with a pale, red light; the snow was of 
a dull amber color ; while, not far off, we could 
see rising above the roofs of intervening houses 
columns of flame with sparks and smoke, all 
looking as if they might proceed from the bot- 
tomless pit. Tongues of flame licked the air 
on all sides with a fiendish satisfaction, while 
out of the night hateful voices yelled Fire ! fire ! 
Every fibre of my being seemed thoroughly dis- 
turbed. I think nothing horrifies me more 
than a fire in the night, with its awful accompa- 
niments of shrieks and screaming bells. 

— This morning we heard that two poor cows 
were burned to death. I felt sorry for them, 
poor dumb creatures that had to die so silent- 
ly, with no power to summon help. My Aunt 
says, " Don't fret about them, but imagine that 
they've gone to the cows' heaven." 



The Young Lady. 189 

I have been reading that soothing, pleasant 
book of Mountford's, entitled, "Thorpe: A 
quiet English town, and Human Life there- 
in." It says many things I should be sorry to 
forget. Here is a sentiment from it that I 
think very just : " If we knew each other bet- 
ter it would not be to love each other less, but 
rather more tenderly." In a great many in- 
stances I am sure that this is true. "We do not 
seek to conceal our worst qualities alone, but also 
many of our very best. Who tells ofall his good 
resolves, his secret struggles to overcome his 
faults, his thoughts of aspiration ? There are 
deeps in our souls up out of which no voice 
comes for others to hear, and down into which 
we seldom look ourselves, but often they are 
filled with what is best and purest. 

March 5. — This is my birthday anniversary. 
I am nineteen. The future looks very dark to 
me. I make no plans. But the dear Father 
whose hand has rested in blessing on my head 
during these many years will surely not de- 
sert me now. So I am not very much afraid, 
only I think with great wonder, once in a 
while, what is to be my lot in life ? 

S., who is only a few months my senior, was 



190 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

here this morning. In her quick way she said : 
"Do you know? I think nineteen is pretty old!" 
Some such idea had been skulking about in my 
own mind. And yet it is a beautiful age, if one 
could stay there more than just a year; but the 
next thing comes "twenty," pouncing upon one 
in such a sudden way that it is really quite over- 
whelming ; and after that, ghosts of old maids 
come grinning at you on every side, that might 
have been dear, kind spirits were it not that 
Public Opinion has abused and tabooed them, 
and splintered all their joints, so that they are 
as awkward as snow-shoes in a parlor. The 
few, however, who are strong enough to sur- 
vive all this, and to stand firm and keep ^brave 
hearts, are among the unacknowledged heroines 
of whom the world is full. 

— I am now studying General History, and 
reading D' Aubigne's " History of the Keforma- 
tion," besides Mrs. Jameson's "Italian Art- 
ists" and Agassiz and Gould's Zoology. Every 
week we have " Art Talks" with Mrs. T., which 
are very entertaining as well as valuable to us. 

— I've just finished Mrs. Stowe's " Sunny 
Memories of Foreign Lands," and am left in 
a bewildered state, just as I am after going 



The Young Lady. 191 

through the exercise known as "making a 
cheese," so common among damsels. Such a 
maze of brilliancy and grandeur as she has led 
me through ! Such great people as she has 
introduced me to ! I am quite gorged with 
the titles of Baron, Duke, and Count, so that 
plain Mrs. and Esquire are all that my surfeit- 
ed taste desires. To read this book is like 
having a kaleidoscope before one's eyes, and to 
lay it down is like putting aside the magical 
instrument, when every thing that meets the 
eye seems for a while faded and plain. 

March 21. — This morning has been the 
most glorious of my life. Not within, but the 
grand dawning of the natural day. When I 
awoke and looked out at my window, the trees 
that usually rise far above it were bent down 
to the ground almost, and every branch and 
twig was loaded with the purest, powdered 
snow. It seemed as though the elements had 
been preparing for the Ice King's last and 
grandest levee. The long branches of a tree 
opposite mother's windows were tugged down 
to the ground, and thatched with snow until 
within them a beautiful arbor was formed. All 
the slender young saplings were transformed 



192 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

into weeping willows, in figure. The rough 
outline of the garden fence was softened and 
beautified by sweeping folds of white ; and the 
ugly, ill-shaped weight that keeps the gate 
closed was a cushion more dainty than the one 
that my friend Mattie S. made for her sister 
on her wedding-day, though that we regarded 
as a marvel of its kind. All the plain, every- 
day things were garnished and disguised so 
that we could hardly recognize them as con- 
nected with the place in which we lived. But 
soon the Sun came peering about, seeming to 
look as curiously upon what had been done in 
his absence as we did ourselves. I think he 
should have been half ashamed, men do so 
pride themselves upon their lack of curiosity ! 
At last, as if angry to think that such liber- 
ties had been taken in his absence, he waxed 
very red in the face, insomuch that the sight 
of him caused the delicate finery of Dame Na- 
ture to shrivel into fragments before our dis- 
appointed eyes. Thus have I acquitted my- 
self of a " bit of description I" 

— Have we not learned a formula which we 
use often thoughtlessly in prayer ? How far 
is this from obedience to the command "Pray 



The Young Lady. 193 

without ceasing," which I think means, have a 
constant wish for goodness ; exercise a constant 
faith ; this is all that God wants. Doesn't that 
prayer reach heaven soonest in which, from 
an agonized heart, comes the earnest supplica- 
tion: "O God! please do," instead of words 
like these : " Thou all-powerful One, who dost 
dwell among the mysteries of eternity, we be- 
seech of Thee that Thou wouldst vouchsafe 
unto us of Thy great goodness this desire of our 
hearts." Don't we forget the wish in the words 
then? Does not the minister in the pulpit 
sometimes think more of his audience than of 
the Almighty — even if he is a minister? But 
in reality don't we prefer childlike earnestness 
of petition to high-sounding eulogy on the at- 
tributes of our Creator? Isn't the broken, 
heart-felt prayer more to our taste — leaving out 
other considerations for the moment — than the 
rhetorical prayer? "What is the reason that 
when I go to church and put my head down 
as the minister says, "Let us pray," I try to 
make myself comfortable, and am careful not 
to dent my forehead on the back of the seat 
before me, and am not thinking much about 
the words that are in my ears, only I never 
N 



194 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

fail to hear the "Amen," or to feel rather re- 
lieved when it comes. I acknowledge that this 
arises partly from my own wickedness; but isn't 
some of the blame to be lodged elsewhere ? I 
can't help thinking so. A friend of mine has 
told me that once, when she wanted something 
very much, and was in great suffering, she ex- 
claimed, at the close of her brief, incoherent pray- 
er : " God, you don't know any thing about 
it, but Christ does !" Perhaps she did wrong 
to say so then, but I don't think she meant 
it, so it isn't written down against her in the 
great Book, I hope. I pray to Christ most, and 
yet it is really God whom I address, the Christ 
part of God — not His justice, not His wrath, 
but the mercy and love that also dwell in Him. 

March 29. — To-night I went to the Junior 
Exhibition of the University. As I sat there, 
I looked over the congregation, and saw many 
whom I believed to be my friends. I thought 
very kindly and pleasantly of them all, and 
felt thankful to God for them. I liked to see 
them so well that I was sorry when the ex- 
ercises were over, and we went forth into the 
ghostliness and darkness of the night. 

— I don't feel well. I am so tired of late. 



V. 

tf jit Utroolft. 



"Perhaps healthy self-possession and self-control were to 
be hers no more ; perhaps that world the strong and pros- 
perous live in had already rolled from beneath her feet for- 
ever : so, at least, it often seemed to us now. " — Charlotte 
Bronte. 

"O sunshine and fair earth! 

Sweet is your kindly mirth, 
Angel of death ! yet, yet a while delay ! 

Too sad it is to part, 

Thus in my spring of heart, 
With all the light and laughter of the day. 

"Too soon, too fast thou'rt come! 
Too beautiful is home; 
A home of gentle voices and kind eyes ! 
And I the loved of all, 
On whom fond blessings fall 
From every lip— oh ! wilt thou rend such ties ? 

Mrs. Hemans. 



TTTE come now to the last Act in the little 
* * Drama of Mary's Life. It has but two 
Scenes, and of these, the second contains that 
Tragedy which attends every life, however sim- 
ple and unpretending it may be — the Tragedy 
of Death. 

When the spring days came on, and nature 
wore again the fair, familiar look that Mary 
loved, a lassitude crept over her, strange and 
painful to behold. 

Away through the trees the waters of Lake 
Michigan flashed in the sunshine ; she watched 
them idly, sitting by the window in her easy- 
chair, but felt no disposition for the run or the 
brisk walk down to the pebbly shore, which 
had always been a favorite pastime with her 
until now. Often she held a book in her hand, 
but mostly with her fingers between the leaves, 



198 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

while, with, eyes gazing far off, she mused upon 
— who shall say what ? The pensive expres- 
sion that stole over her face gave to our anx- 
ious hearts their only clue. 

"I'm tired!" these words were often on her 
lips ; beyond them she made no complaint. 

But soon the disease that had long been lurk- 
ing in her delicate frame manifested itself in a 
manner that was unmistakable, and bright red 
spots upon the sufferer's neck showed where 
" counter irritants" had been applied to relieve 
internal inflammation. A few days passed, 
when she reluctantly admitted that she did not 
feel able to sit up beyond the hours of morn- 
ing, though she continued to make her toilet 
in the neat and tasteful way which was habit- 
ual to her, and sometimes whiled away an 
hour by reading. She had recently penciled 
some heads of the Eeformers — Luther, Knox, 
and Latimer, from a book of elegant engrav- 
ings. These she retouched with much care. 
She seemed unusually fond of listening to 
hymns, especially to some of those sweet, fa- 
miliar ones which are found in the later Sab- 
bath-school Collections. 

"Saviour, like a Shepherd lead us," 



The Invalid. 199 

and 

"We're homeward bound," 

were favorites, I remember. 

A few brief entries from her Journal will be 
given at this point : 

April 7. — I write while lying on the bed 
not very sick, but feeling weak and tired. I 
have chills often, and after them I am feverish. 
Mother seems anxious, though without need, 
I think, and is almost constantly doing some- 
thing to make me better. Father, Aunt S., and 
Frank are very thoughtful and gentle with me; 
so that it is almost a pleasure to be sick, since 
sickness shows me more clearly than I could 
see if in health what loving friends God has 
given me. When I feel so faint as I have for 
the last few weeks, I can quite appreciate Aunt 
S.'s longing for "the Sunniest of all Climates," 
which cures every one who goes to it ; where 
there are no sombre days like this, and never 
any winter. But when I am better again the 
old love of life returns, and the weather ceases 
to have such an influence upon me. 

— Last evening F. read aloud to us a sketch 
of the Life of Lady Jane Grey. When she 
came to the description of that terrible execu- 



200 



Nineteen Beautiful Years. 



tion, the tears were in my eyes — though that 
is rare. Nothing of which I have read in His- 
tory, even the account of Louis XVI. and his 
family, has seemed more pitiful to me than 
these words of Lady Jane as, blindfolded, she 
gropes for the block, murmuring : " Where is 
it? What shall I do ?" 

Oh, Christ was by her side, for without Him 
who can meet death with calmness ? 

— Just now, when Frank was playing and 
singing so cheerfully out in the sitting-room, 
this thought came over me : Perhaps she will 
always be the healthy, happy one, while I shall 
be an invalid. * * * * 

April 10. — How the tides of life ebb and 
flow ! Strange, shapeless thoughts flit through 
my mind — coming I know not whence, going 
I know not where. Glimpses of a purer realm 
than ours— a more exalted life than mine. I 
wish that I could keep them longer. * * 

April 11.— Mother is so wonderfully unself- 
ish in her devotion to me, now I am sick, that 
I can not help noticing it, even in her. To- 
day she thinks me better, though I am still very 
weak. As I was lying here a while ago, the 
thought of the silence of God came to me with 



The Invalid. 201 

great force. How patiently He waits for " His 
own good time ;" sees His laws broken all 
over the world, and the fiendish tyranny of 
human beings ; the cry of the wretched and 
oppressed reaches His attentive ear, but He 
is silent amidst it all. And yet we who love 
and trust Him know full well that God's day 
is marching on ! 

These were the last lines she ever wrote. 
Her disease became more violent. For seven 
weeks her veins burned and her lips were 
parched with fever. In the first week of the 
seven, she had a very severe attack of pain, 
greater than she had suffered in her life be- 
fore. Her plaintive moans were piteous to hear. 
By the use of ether she was finally relieved ; 
when, lying back among the pillows with an 
unnatural expression on her face, she said : 

" O Frank ! Weren't you very much fright- 
ened ? Didn't you think perhaps I might die 
right off? Didn't you pray?" 

When told that we had not thought her in 
danger, she exclaimed : 

11 But oh ! I was in danger. If I'm so again, 
be sure to pray ! You won't forget?" 



202 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

And now the wish to visit her old home in 
Wisconsin became her ruling passion. It was 
her chief topic of conversation when she should 
go, and how. She was fond of recalling mem- 
ories of our childhood. Most of her conversa- 
tions with me were begun with the words : 
"Don't you remember?" And then would 
follow some incident of our life as little girls. 

" Now talk about going to ' Forest Home V " 
she would say, nestling among the pillows and 
looking at the flowers she held, herself as fair 
as they, with the bright hectic flush on her 
cheeks, and the brilliant, new light in her eyes. 
Then would follow an animated conversation 
concerning the dress she- would wear, the train 
she would take, the kindly greeting she would 
receive from Mr. and Mrs. E., father's tenants 
on the old farm, and the pleasant occupations 
she would have when there. She liked to 
talk about the river, how blue it was, and how 
silently its waters glided away toward the 
south; about the trees, and how much taller 
they would look than when she saw them last. 
She had a slate and pencil brought, that she 
might amuse herself by making little sketches 
of scenes familiar to her there, but her hands 



The Invalid. 203 

trembled so much that she " could not make 
the lines come straight," she said. When fa- 
ther came home from the city at night, she 
would grasp his hand and say: "Don't you 
think that I look better ? I've been very care- 
ful all day, and have obeyed every one of the 
doctor's orders. Can't I go to c Forest Home' 
in a week from now ? Carry me on a bed ; I 
don't care how I go, for I think it would make 
me well again just to breathe the air that made 
me feel so strong and happy when I was a lit- 
tle girl." 

Her talk suggested to us, many times, these 
lines of Tennyson's : ^ 

"Oh look! the Sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a 

glow ; 
He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know ; 
And there I move no longer now, and there his light may 

shine — 
Wild flowers in the valley for other hands than mine. ,, 

Often, when it grew late in the afternoon, she 
would listen for " Father's train" as she called 
it, and when the whistle sounded she would 
ask us to cool her crimson cheeks with water, 
saying: " Somehow these discourage father; 
he lays his hand against them, and shakes his 



204: Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

head. If we can get some of the color out he 
won't be so much worried." 

She liked to hear a little reading every day 
from the Bible. " Please read my chapters," 
she would say, " two from the New Testament, 
one from the Old." 

We have shown, by extracts from her Jour- 
nal, that death, and every thing connected with J 
it, was a terror to Mary, always. This pecul- / 
iarity was in marked contrast with the singu- 
larly religious and trusting character of her 
mind. Anxious to avoid giving her need- 
less pain, we concealed our suspicions of her 
danger, and spoke hopefully of her recov- 
ery. We knew that she was ready for what- 
ever God would send upon one who had al- 
ways been a loving and obedient child toward 
Him. 

So day after day passed, the fever raging, 
the cough growing more violent. It was a 
study of thrilling interest to watch the refin- 
ing of every sense — the ethereal purity of her 
wasting face. 

The fresh air pouring through an open win- 
dow would exhilarate her almost beyond what 
she was able to bear. " Oh this air ! It is like 



The Invalid. 205 

Heaven !" she sometimes said. The taste of a 
strawberry often made her exclaim with de- 
light. Once, when some remarkably fine ones 
were sent to her, she held up the largest — a 
splendid "Triomphe de Gand" — and said, as 
she looked at it admiringly : 

" See, mother ! and think of all the warm 
days and the sunshine that God sent to make 
the berry ripe and red ! I shouldn't wonder if 
He remembered a poor, sick girl named Mary 

, and meant that it should be for her. Is 

not that a pleasant thought?" 

The exquisite perfume of a rose would bring 
tears of joy into her eyes. " Come and see ! 

Mother! smell this flower!" she would ex- 
claim, sinking among the pillows, faint with 
the shock to her strangely acute sense. 

11 1 want always to be a child. In heaven 

1 should like to be a child-angel IV she ex- 
claimed one day, after remaining silent for a 
long time. 

« "Why, I thought you were quite proud of 
being a young lady," said her mother; "and 
you have tried to become intelligent, and to 
prepare yourself for the society of refined, 
1 grown-up people. 7 " 



206 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

" Oh yes, I know," wearily replied the girl, 
keeping fast to the wish of her reverie ; M but 
of late it seems to me so sweet to be a child. 
You know what pleasant times we had. How 
well I like to think of the Indian Summer days, 
when the woods were so golden and the dis- 
tance so blue. Do you remember the plaintive 
little song of the mourning dove in the trees 
near the Big Eavine? It would make me cry, 
I think, to hear it now." 

She often asked us to tell her " the news 
about the war." 

" We must pray for the soldiers," she said, 
" especially for those who are sick. I can sym- 
pathize with them. But oh! it hurts me to 
think of the poor suffering men who are far 
away from their wives and daughters, or the 
boys who haven't their mothers to take care of 
them. I have several friends who do all they 
can for me, and yet sometimes, these long, hot 
days, I find it very hard to be sick." 

Her rings fell off one day, so thin were her 
fingers now. 

" Put them away, mother, or let Frank wear 
them till I get well again," she said, in a cheer- 
ful tone. 



The Invalid. 207 

"When awake, she was always perfectly nat- 
ural, but in sleep her mind wandered, and she 
seemed to think aloud. 

On the last Sabbath night of her life she re- 
quested mother to go away to another part of 
the house where she could rest undisturbed, and 
me to stay by her side. Bidding mother good- 
night, she said : 

1 'Now lie down and go to sleep as peace- 
fully as though I were not in the world." A 
few minutes afterward she said, in a drowsy 
voice, "Are you with me in the trundle-bed, 
Frank? and is the pretty, starred quilt over 
us ?" In fancy she was a child again, and sur- 
roundings, long forgotten, were about her once 
more. 

A little later she moaned out : 

" Don't you hear those strange beings flying 
in the air, slowly, slowly ? I'm — so — tired. I 
want to go away into- — their — sleep." 

During the evening I had talked with her 
about her scholars in Sunday-school, and had 
suggested that she should send a message to 
them, as she had not seen some of them in 
several weeks, none save her nearest friends 
being admitted to her sick-room. 



208 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

That night the subject was in her dreams. 
At first she seemed talking to herself: 

" What can I say that will be of any use?" 
she murmured. 

"I'll talk to Emma. She isn't a Christian, 
and yet I know she thinks about God and the 
duty that she owes to Him a great deal." 

She was silent for a few minutes, and then, 
in a voice inexpressibly sweet and serious, she 
said, imagining her pupil, a very intelligent and 
interesting girl, to be present : 

"Emma, I hope you remember your prom- 
ise to read the Bible, to pray, and to be good. 
Don't think too much about this changing world 
down here, but about that wonderful, wonder- 
ful world where God lives! Eemember that 
where your treasure is your heart will be, so 
you can easily tell whether you are right or 
not. * * * * There she is gone. I won- 
der if I vexed her ? Was I too hortatory, 
Frank?" 

Waking then, she said : " Why, she isn't 
here! Was it a dream?" 

Two or three days before she went away from., 
us she looked up suddenly, when we were alone 
together, and said : " If mother died, shouldn't 



The Invalid. 209 

you want to die too ?" and receiving for an an- 
swer: "I would like to do so at any time, if 
I felt perfectly sure of heaven," she said, with 
the bright, peculiar look that she always wore 
when she had something very pleasant to tell, 
"Well, do you know? it has come to me late- 
ly, that if I died I should go right to heaven !" 

This was more than she had ever before de- 
clared with confidence. Full of humility in 
her religious life, as in all other things, she 
looked tremblingly toward her Saviour, and 
though hoping in His love, so keen was her 
sense of her own imperfections that she had 
not the perfect assurance so often and so truth- 
fully expressed among Christians. 

She seemed in haste to recover, that she 
might be useful .to those around her. Such 
words as these were often on her lips: "I 
would like to be well, if only for one day, so 
that I might do good to some one. I've never 
helped any body yet, unless one or two of my 
Sunday-school class, and I'm not sure about 
that." 

The loving nature which was hers was most 
strikingly shown in the words and actions of 
these last days. Eeticent and undemonstrative 

Q 



210 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

when in health, the feelings of affection that 
always glowed in her heart for her friends 
were now permitted to have full sway. Their 
kindness in sending her bouquets, fruits, and 
messages, impressed her deeply. " How~ good 
every one is!" she said. "If I were a queen 
there could be nothing more done to comfort 
me. Oh, humanity, humanity! It is wonder- 
ful to me !" 

When her friends sat down beside her she 
would slip her little, hot hand into theirs, say- 
ing sometimes, with a smile: "Do you love 
me? Father, mother, please tell me often: I 
like to hear the words." 

Once, upon leaving the^room, her father took 
up a pretty, white kitten, with whose frolic- 
some ways she had been amused, and carried 
it out, gently stroking its fur. Mary turned 
toward me and said: "It is foolish, I suppose, 
but I can't help envying the little cat every 
caress that father gives to it." 

A friend who was about leaving town came 
in to say good-by. 

"Mother, she kissed me last, and so much 
longer than she did any one else ; what was 
that for?" said Mary, and she wept bitterly, 



The Invalid. 211 

for the first and last time while she was ill. 
She must have then surmised that she was 
thought to be in danger, though she did not 
ask again, and no reference to the subject was 
afterward made until the last hour of her life. 

At the suggestion of a friend a simple rem- 
edy was employed, which relieved her very 
much, and, as Mary thought, made her speedy 
recovery certain. 

" Now when you are well again I shall feel 
very proud !" said the friend, playfully. " Oh 
no," she answered, looking up in gentle re- 
proof, " You didn't save me : it was God." 

" Am I patient?" she asked; " do I take my 
medicine pleasantly ?" She grew more thought- 
ful and considerate each day. 

But her time of trial was soon to end. Two 
days before she left us she said, speaking of her 
physician, in whom she had perfect confidence: 
" I like him very much, but I don't need him 
any more — please ask him not to come — Pm 
getting wellP 

And now her last day upon earth was pass- 
ing quietly away, although during its morning 
hours we thought her better, and felt less than 
our usual concern. She asked to be carried 



212 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

into the family sitting-room. When her father 
spoke of going to the city a few hours, as his 
business had been neglected for a long time, 
she requested him to put it off a little longer, 
saying: "Next week I shall be so much bet- 
ter that I will not keep you a single day." 
She asked for music, and a chant was sung : 

" From the recesses of a lowly spirit 
Our humble prayer ascends, O Father hear it! 
Borne on the trembling wings of fear and meekness, 
Forgive its weakness. 

" Who can resist Thy gentle call, appealing 
To every generous thought and grateful feeling; 
Oh ! who can hear the accents of Thy mercy, 
And never love Thee ? 

" Kind Benefactor! plant within this bosom 
The seeds of holiness, and let them blossom 
In fragrance and in beauty bright and vernal, 
And spring eternal. 

" Then place them in those everlasting gardens 
Where angels walk, and seraphs are the wardens ; 
Where every flower, brought safe through death's dark 

portal, 
Becomes immortal." 

11 Oh, I like that !" she exclaimed, and then 
was silent for several minutes. 

She asked her father for some silver coins, 






The Invalid. 213 

and jingled them in her hands, saying : " I like 
the part of Mineralogy, where the noble metals 
are described, and the part about the precious 
stones. Isn't that a beautiful chapter in the Rev- 
elation where the New Jerusalem is pictured, 
with its walls of emerald and of sapphire?" 

By-and-by she was carried back to her own 
room, saying : 

11 To-morrow will be Sunday, and no one will 
be in. I can lie there in the sitting-room all 
day long, and have such a pleasant change." 

Sweet girl ! She little knew what that 
"pleasant change" would be! 

In the afternoon she slept for a short time. 
Awaking suddenly she started up, exclaiming 
in hurried tones: ■ 

"Read the Bible tome ! Please read it quick!" 

"What shall I read?" asked her father, as 
The Book was brought. 

"Oh, something that will make Christ ap- 
pear beautiful !" she said. 

Father steadied his voice, and read that 
matchless Fifty -third chapter of Isaiah. 

When he had finished she said: "That's 
good ; but can't you find a place where it says 
Christ is sorry for sick people ?" 



214 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

" Yes," he replied, " I'll read about the mo- 
ther of Peter, who was healed." 

" But oh !" said the sick girl, "can't you find 
some place where it says Hds sorry now ? They 
say Christ loves us better than our mothers do, 
and yet mother is anxious that I should get 
well ; but — Christ —-don't — seem — to — care :" 
and tears were in her eyes. 

" Oh yes ! No one cares for you as He 
does!" said her mother, eagerly; "and what- 
ever He does with my darling, is just the wisest, 
kindest thing !" and she turned from the bed- 
side unable to say more. 

" Yes, it is true ; I know that it is true," 
murmured the dying girl; " but we can not see 
it always." 

Then she was silent, and seemed to sleep. 

Oh, .there were breaking hearts around her 
as she lay there so still, with her pulse flutter- 
ing — with her heart making seven strokes to 
one of her father's heart ! And all the while 
the sky was blue as a violet ; the sunshine fall- 
ing through the trees before the window made 
a dark mosaic, set in gold, upon the floor ; and 
the birds sang just as merrily as if no grief 
were in the world. Her flowers were in vases 



The Invalid. 215 

on the table ; her work-basket with stitches on 
the needle that she had not drawn through ; 
her favorite "Ave Maria" was open on the 
piano; her little kitten playing in the grass. 
There she lay in her youth, with her dreams 
unrealized — with the work, for which she had 
longed so earnestly, undone. The world went 
on with noise 'and strife ; her native land was 
shaken by the onset of contending hosts ; her 
nearest and dearest friends watched her with 
agonized hearts, and still she slept — unmindful 
of joy or sorrow, heedless alike of the bird's 
song without or the smothered sobs within. 

The sun went down, but she did not heed 
his going. A sunset more solemn and signifi- 
cant than that was coming soon — so thought 
her friends as they stood beside her bed. 

The shadows lengthened, and all was still in 
the pleasant village as it had been a hundred 
nights before. 



VI. 

Cttttatttt ttpatt UnrntiMteii lift 



"I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least 
of all evils. I know many wise men that fear to die ; for 
the change is bitter, and flesh would refuse to prove it : 
besides the expectation brings terror, and that exceeds the 
evil. To speak truth, no man knows the lists of his own pa- 
tience ; nor can divine how able he shall be in his suffer- 
ings till the storm come ; the perfectest virtue being tried in 
action." — Bacon's Essay on Death. 

11 To close the eye and close the ear, 

Wrapped in a trance of bliss, 

And gently drawn in loving arms, 

To swoon to That from This. 
Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep, 

Scarce asking where we are, 
To feel all evil sink away, 
All sorrow and all care." 

Mrs. Stowe. 



OUT upon the shoreless sea the tremulous 
spirit was drifting, though she knew it 
not, while 

" We watched her breathing through the night, 
Her breathing soft and low : 
As in her breast the wave of life 
Went heaving to and fro." 

The mystic change which the morning was 
to bring found no prophecy in these childlike 
words with which she accompanied her good- 
night kiss to a friend : 

" Pray that I need not cough much, and that 
mother and I may have a beautiful sleep, and 
that, if God is willing, I may grow strong 
again." 

Late in the night she said : 

11 Please talk to me of Forest Home. When 
are you going there?" 

" Why do you wish to know?" we asked. 

"Oh, because when you go I'm going too." 



220 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

Thus did she cling to life with the ardency 
of youth and hope. 

She whispered, brokenly, these words, evi- 
dently in reverie : 

" I'm sorry — but I couldn't help it. It was 
born in me to be afraid of the dead — and of 
graves." 

Soon she started up in pain. 

" I feel so strange I" she said. 

Her mother hastened to prepare an anodyne, 
saying: "It will make you better, my child." 
But in a changed and deep-toned voice Mary 
exclaimed: "No! None but God can help me 
now /" 

"We knew that she was stricken then;" 

we saw it in her face. 

The curtains were drawn aside. Through an 
eastern window streamed the earliest beams of 
sunlight; but for that gentle girl had dawned 
"Another morn than ours.'* 

All hope was gone now. Eternity was just 
before the girl so tenderly reared, so carefully 
shielded all her life from every thing that 
could alarm her. We who had always stood 
between her and danger could help her no 
more. We must put her hand in Christ's, and 



Entrance upon Unconditioned Life. 221 

be content to leave her in His care. The 
strange, unmistakable look came into her face 
as she leaned against her father's breast. 

"Mary," said he, in a voice kept steady and 
clear by the wonderful love that he bore her, 
"if I should tell you that God wanted you to 
go to Him very soon, how should you feel?" 

She turned her face toward his suddenly, and 
as if in reproach. For a moment she did not an- 
swer. We waited in agonizing suspense. Then 
speaking slowly, and in a firm but mournful 
voice, she said : 

" I did not think that I should die— I am so 
young ;" and added, after a slight pause : " But 
if God should want me I don't think I should 
be much afraid, but I would say, Take me, God /" 
the last three words being uttered in an almost 
supernatural tone. 

"Does Christ seem near to you?" her mo- 
ther asked, a moment afterward. 

" Oh yes, I see Him a little, but He seems a 
good ways off." Looking up, beseechingly, 
she said : " Please tell me if you think I have 
been good?" 

Very eagerly we answered — as we could 
most truthfully do — that her life had been 



222 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

beautiful and pure. But even while we spoke 
she turned her head away from us and mur- 
mured : 

"But after all, that makes no difference 
now. I wish Christ would come nearer." 

" Shall we pray to him?" I asked. 

"Oh yes, pray — pray thankful prayers!" 
she answered, eagerly. 

So we knelt beside her, while the June breeze 
came through an open window and fanned her 
fading face, and asked Christ to reveal Himself 
clearly to Mary ; implored Him to make her 
as conscious of His presence as she was of ours ; 
and to strengthen her for the conflict with her 
first and last enemy — Death. While we were 
yet praying she clasped her hands, exclaiming: 

"Oh, He has come I He has come ! He holds 
me by the hand ! He is all mine — oh no, not 
all ! He is every body's, and yet mine !" And 
looking up, with strange, dilated eyes, she said 
to us: "I'd like to talk good to you, but I'm 
too weak." 

We asked if she would see any of her 
friends from the village, several having as- 
sembled. " Oh no !" she answered, wearily, 
"only us four." 






Entrance upon Unconditioned Life. 223 

She lay with her eyes closed, and solilo- 
quized thus : " Christ talks to me. He says : 
i She tried to be good, but she wandered. But 
I will forgive her and save her. I didn't die 
to save good people, but sinners. I saved the 
thief on the cross. 7 " 

In a moment afterward she repeated these 
words without the slightest variation. 

We asked if she had any message for her 
brother, who was absent, and for the sweet girl 
who was soon to be his wife. 

"Oh tell them to help others to be Chris- 
tians," she replied. 

We asked what we should say to her Sun- 
day-school class from her. 

11 Tell them all to be good !" she exclaimed, 
with great earnestness, as if she saw that there 
is nothing else worth living for; and, gather- 
ing all her strength, she repeated, with almost 
startling energy, " Tell every body to be good!" 

As in the days when we were children, just 
before we went to sleep, we asked the same 
question, so now before the long sleep came to 
her, I said : " Mary, will you forgive me for all 
that has ever been unkind in my conduct to- 
ward you Y % 



224 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

She turned her face toward me, and slowly 
opened her wonderful eyes : 

"I forgive you, since you ask it," she said; 
"but oh! you were always good: you never 
were unkind." In this last hour, as ever, her 
loving heart refused to recognize any other 
than the best nature of her friends. 

And now the parting moment had come. 
"With a beautiful smile on her lips she mur- 
mured : u /'m getting more faith /" 

Suddenly she opened her eyes — the pupil so 
wide, the iris so blue — they did not seem like 
mortal eyes just then. She looked with in- 
tense gaze at the pleasant, morning sunshine ; 
at the fair sky and waving trees ; at each of us 
who stood beside her. We knew that she was 
saying good-by to the world that had been so 
beautiful — to the friends who had been so 
dear. 

"Now — take me quick — dear Grod! — take 
me — on this side I" she murmured, brokenly, 
stretching her hands toward the right. She 
closed her eyes wearily. Her breast heaved 
once — twice — and she was gone. 

Her father laid her back upon the pillows 
with the words : " Lord Jesus, receive her spirit. 



Entrance upon Unconditioned Life. 225 

She was a precious treasure ; we thank Thee 
for these years of joy that we have spent with 
her; and now, God! we give her back to 
Thee!" 

So the fresh, young soul went back to its 
Creator and Kedeemer, while we stood spell- 
bound in that solemn place, " gazing steadfast- 
ly up into heaven." 

" Well done of God to halve the lot, 
And give her all the sweetness; 
To us the empty room and cot, 
To her the heaven's completeness. 

"To us this grave : to her the rows 
The mystic palm-trees spring in ; 
To us the silence in the house, 
To her the choral singing !" 



THRENODY.* 

BY JOEL BENTON. 

Two years to-day Death's angel came, 
And as his shadow darkened by 
The sweetest soul went up the sky 

That ever bore an earthly name. 

We saw her fading day by day — 
The fatal rose flamed on her cheek, 
And plainer far than words can speak 

The wan, pale features seemed to say: 

"I go — in joy the bright world swims; 
From the fair summit where I stand 
I almost touch the Promised Land 
Which Youth foretells, and Komance hymns; 

"I hear the first, faint, murmuring roar 
Break from life's ocean, but must go 
Beneath the violets sweet and low, 
Just as I gain the emerald shore; 

"While with Circean blandishment 

The Future waves her beckoning hand — 
I trust: I do not understand, 
And with Life's briefness rest content." 

* This Poem, originally published in the New York Independent, is so 
beautiful, and, in the present connection, so appropriate, that we can not 
forbear inserting it. 



228 Nineteen Beautiful Years, 

O Nature, subtler than the Sphinx — 
The Flowers bloom from Spring to Fall ; 
The Brutes live out their time; and all 

But Man, who only knows and thinks, 

Reach their appointed term of years ; 
At every age he yields his breath, 
And this dumb miracle of Death 

Opens a Marah fount of tears. 

The day our sudden grief befell 
The silver hours went warbling by, 
No dark cloud whispered from the sky 

The near approach of Azrael. 

The room lights up — far splendors gem 
The walls — she smiles — the summons meets ; 
Henceforth she walks the golden streets 

That stud the New Jerusalem. 

We grope: Faith sheds her brightest ray 
On whom the heavenly amaranths fall, 
We plant the asphodel, and all 

Our trembling, stammering lips can say, 

Is, on this day Death's angel came, 
And as his shadow darkened by 
The sweetest soul went up the sky 

That ever bore an earthly name. 



VII. 

CnttrittMtig ^anigrapJE 



TT7HAT further can we say ? " The last 
* * of earth" had come. The ominous, in- 
evitable Hour, with its mystery and its tri- 
umph, was past. The loved and loving soul 
reposed upon the bosom of its Father and its 
God. And yet we linger round a memory so 
sweet, as on that Sabbath morn we lingered 
near the couch on which our dear one lay in 
her robes of fleecy white, the fair, young Bride 
of Death. 

Surely, we thought, the loving-kindness of 
Our Father was revealed anew to us in the 
final conflict of her life. Though her constitu- 
tional fear of death, increased by the repulsive 
aspect which it had worn before her eyes, was 
a prominent trait of her character ; and though 
she heard voices, earnest and sweet, calling her 
back to the life that had been so pleasant, yet, 
when He whose right it was to fix her destiny 
sent His mandate for her appearance in His 



232 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

presence, she turned a child -like glance to- 
ward heaven, and said : 

"I come, O God! I come!" 

With a smile upon her lips she met the 
dark, relentless Messenger whose mission is to 
sever the natural and accustomed union of the 
body and the soul. In this mysterious strength 
which was given to one whose shrinking from 
the strange and unfamiliar was proverbial, we 
find new proof that the age of miracles ceased 
not with the ascension of our Lord and the 
martyrdom of His disciples. Not more truly 
did Christ stand beside the doubting Thomas, 
than He stood beside the dying bed of this 
young girl, " who had not seen, and yet had 
believed." To each of us who felt His pres- 
ence in that saddest, yet most sublime scene 
of Mary's life, the Apocalypse of the Beloved 
Disciple is supplemented by a Eevelation as di- 
rect from God, and more than equally tangible 
to minds which are uninspired. 

A singular coincidence attending Mary's 
death remains for us to note. 

For several months previous to her last ill- 
ness one passage from Isaiah had been so 
much in her thoughts, and so frequently re- 



Concluding Paragraphs. 233 

ferred to in her conversation, that it became 
a subject of remark among her friends. Turn- 
ing to Isaiah, xli. 13, in her little Bible, we 
find this passage, surrounded by a parenthesis 
in pencil, and on the margin, in her handwrit- 
ing, the words: " My verse." — "For I the 
Lord thy God will hold thy right hand ) saying 
unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee" 

It seems to us a beautiful and singular fact 
that in her last hour she said : " Christ has 
come! He holds me by the hand. — God, please 
take me quick ! Take me on this side!" turn- 
ing to the right. 

We can not tell how things unseen and spir- 
itual are joined to things visible and carnal ; 
and hence we may not say that in these myste- 
rious utterances of the dying girl there is found 
no fulfillment of the prophecy made months 
before, in the sudden fascination which that 
passage had for her mind. 

On the tenth day of June we carried her 
out of the little parlor, whose walls had often 
echoed back her pleasant tones or ringing 
laugh, and in the church where she had been 
baptized, and where she had shared in the hon- 
ors of " Commencement Day," just and ten- 



234 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

der words were spoken of her by one who, 
while she lived among us, had inspired her 
with a reverential love.* "Blessed are the pure 
in heart" was the text from which he preached. 

In one hour more the bitter words, " Ashes 
to ashes, dust to dust," had smote upon our 
ears, mingled with the hollow sound of fall- 
ing clods ; but we remembered those other 
words, "I am the resurrection and the life," 
and we were comforted. 

Turning away from the newly-made grave, 
adorned by wreaths of myrtle and white roses, 
which thoughtful friends had left upon it, a vision 
came to us, the memory of whose radiance will 
never leave our hearts. Beyond the depths of 
the violet-hued sky, far up in Heaven, we saw 
what seemed to us like a vast amphitheatre, 
which circled round a throng of shining wor- 
shipers, who, upheld and canopied by clouds 
like the rarest of the sunset, gazed on a face 
from which glory ineffable shone forth. 
Among them we saw Mary. One look at the 
rapt and glowing countenance of her who had 
been with us but two days before, told that it 

* Rev. H. Bannister, D.D., Professor of Hebrew in the 
Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, 111. 



Concluding Paragraphs. 235 

was Christ — the glorious, satisfying Christ — on 
whom they gazed. The love which beamed 
from those brilliant eyes no mortal words may 
measure. And the music, that surged like a 
great wave throughout that mighty host! — one 
murmur of it fell upon our heavy ears, and we 
were transformed for the moment into strong, 
jubilant souls, over whom sorrow had no pow- 
er. But as the vision faded a sweet submis- 
siveness possessed our hearts, and we felt quite 
content to wait God's time, and eager to profit 
by the discipline He should see fit to send ; for 
we knew that the years of prayer would soon 
be past, and the endless years of praise begun ; 
that the time of trial would melt away into the 
eternity of triumph which surely waits for faith- 
ful souls. 

"Yet not the less, o'er all the heart hath lost, 
Shall faith rejoice, when Nature grieves the most: 
Then comes her triumph! through the shadowy gloom 
Her star in glory rises from the tomb, 
Mounts to the day-spring, leaves the cloud below, 
And gilds the tears that cease not yet to flow. 
Yes, all is o'er! fear, doubt, suspense are fled, 
Let brighter thoughts be with the virtuous dead! 
The final ordeal of the soul is past, 
And the pale brow is seal'd to Heaven at last!" 



VIII. 

WUvtt 



/~\ FRIEND, where art thou, who didst watch, last year, 
^^^ The autumn glory in the forests burn? 
Who heard the acorns dropping — praised the clear, 

Gold tints of royal maples ; who didst turn 
The pages of this book I read to-day; / 

Who held, in spring, blue violets in thy hand, 
And, wondering at their beauty, who didst say, 

"There must be violets in that other land." 

Oh, hast thou found them there? Where didst thou go, 

When, on that summer Sabbath morn, you four 
Together journeying, sudden met the flow 

Of death's dark tide, and one returned no more? 
When, on that day of Christ, the sore, sore need 

That thou must cross came, and they led thee slow 
Down to the brink where He could meet and lead 

Thee safely over, where, where didst thou go? 

Art thou so far, O Friend, thou dost not know 
What wondering looks we lift unto thy sphere? 

What visions of transcendent fairness grow 
About thy likeness so familiar here? 



240 Nineteen Beautiful Years. 

What questioning thoughts of what thy life may be; 

What varied tasks thy growing powers employ; 
What fitnesses of sight and sound agree 

To crown thy fullness of completed joy ? 

What converse dost thou hold ? What strange, new speech 

Hast thou been learning in that foreign land? 
Up what far heights of knowledge dost thou reach, 

All unfamiliar when we clasped thy hand ? 
What problems hast thou solved that fret us still? 

What mysteries whose shadows on us fall? 
What revelations hast thou of the Will 

That moulds our life, and guides and holds us all? 

What vision hast thou of thy lower life ? 

How dost thou measure now its dear-bought bliss? 
What heed hast thou of all its grief and strife ? 

How doth that life's completeness perfect this? 
How is it with thee? Hast thou climbed so high 

All memory of thine upward way is lost ? 
Do our rough paths so far below thee lie 

Thou hast forgotten what thy rare bliss cost ? 

What trace doth now thy ransomed spirit bear 

Of all earth's wondrous beauty? Amber glow 
Of autumn thou didst love — the lustre fair 

Of moonlight on the waters — banks of snow 
In distant depths of blue mid-summer skies. 

The daisy's brightness in the meadow grass — 
When thou, O Friend, to higher realms didst rise, 

Did all the impress of this beauty pass? 



Where? 241 

Wilt thou, enshrined in thy perpetual calm, 

At rest from toil, pure from the stain of tears — 
In that long summer, crowned with peace and palm, 

Be growing from us while we count the years 
That bring us nearer to thy high estate? 

Hast thou learned all our narrow lives can teach? 
O Friend, who walked and talked with us so late, 

Art thou so far beyond our spirit's reach ? 

Nay, nay, thou art not far — we hold thee still ; 

Our souls catch music from thy spirit's tone ; 
Sometimes upon our hearts clear dews distill 

From wandering airs of that untroubled zone 
Where thou dost range — Thou dost not love us less 

That we so blindly seek our crown to win, 
That, in our narrow bounds, we can not guess 

To what great glory thou hast entered in. 

O gentle Spirit, who hast gained so much, 

Sometimes, we pray thee, when our hearts are sore, 

Reach pitying down, with healing in thy touch; 
Inspire the faint, who faintest now no more. 

Sometimes, when dangers thicken in our-«way, 
Send to our shrinking souls a breath of cheer, 

That we may feel thee living, day by day, y* 

O Friend, who art so far and yet so near! '>> .J 

*a¥ -Si 
Luella Clack* 



September, 1862. 



THE END. 

Q 






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Miss Sedgwick's Works. 



Miss Sedgwick has marked individuality ; she writes with a higher 
aim than merely to amuse. Indeed, the rare endowments of her mind 
depend in an unusual degree upon the moral qualities with which they 
are united for their value. Animated by a cheerful philosophy, and 
anxious to pour its sunshine into every place where there is lurking 
care or suffering, she selects for illustration the scenes of every-day ex- 
perience, paints them with exact fidelity, and seeks to diffuse over the 
mind a delicious serenity, and in the heart kind feelings and sympa- 
thies, and wise ambition, and steady hope. Her style is colloquial, pic- 
turesque, and marked by a facile grace, which is evidently a gift of na- 
ture. Her characters are nicely drawn and delicately contrasted ; her 
delineation of manners decidedly the best that have appeared.— Prose 
Writers of America. 



TV/TEMOIR OF JOSEPH CURTIS. A Model 
Man. By the Author of " Married or Sin- 
gle ?" "Means and Ends," "The Linwoods," 
"Hope Leslie," "Live and Let Live," &c, &c* 
i6mo, Muslin, 50 cents. 



M 



ARRIED OR SINGLE? By Miss Catha- 
rine M. Sedgwick, Author of " Hope Leslie," 
"The Linwoods," "Means and Ends," "Live 
and Let Live," &c, &c. 2 vols. i2mo, Mus- 
lin, $2 00. 






MISS SEDGWICK'S WORKS. 

IVE AND LET LIVE; or, Domestic Service 
Illustrated. By Miss C. M. Sedgwick, i 8mo, 
Muslin, 50 cents. 



TV/JEANS AND ENDS; or, Self-training. By Miss 
CM. Sedgwick. i8mo, Muslin, 50 cents. 



LOVE TOKEN FOR CHILDREN. De- 
signed for Sunday-School Libraries. By Miss 
C. M. Sedgwick. i8mo, Muslin, 50 cents. 



<HE POOR RICH MAN AND THE RICH 
POOR MAN. By Miss C. M. Sedgwick. 
i8mo, Muslin, 50 cents. 



OTORIES FOR YOUNG PERSONS. By Miss 
CM. Sedgwick. i8mo, Muslin, 50 cents. 



TT7ILTON HARVEY, AND OTHER TALES. 
By Miss C M. Sedgwick. \8mo, Muslin, 
50 cents. 



fyax$tx*8 Catalogue, 



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